Gui Zhu Chen says her “whole body is falling apart” after years spent as a “live-in” home care aide, often working more than 90 straight hours without sleep or meal breaks. In that time, she says, she was compensated for only a fraction of the hours she worked.
In 2018, Chen submitted formal complaints to the state Department of Labor alleging wage theft, but the agency suddenly dropped its investigation three years ago. In a 2023 lawsuit challenging the labor department’s decision, her attorneys claim she is owed approximately $171,000 in unpaid wages.
“It’s just not fair,” said Chen, 69, through an interpreter. “We demand the governor enforce labor law and pay our stolen wages.”
Now, she may be closer to relief. In January, a state Supreme Court judge quietly reopened Chen’s case along with more than a 100 others filed by home care workers against the state labor department.
Judge Daniel C. Lynch found merit in workers’ claims that the state abandoned its obligations when it dropped its probe of more than two dozen home care agencies. The department had argued that mandatory arbitration clauses in the agencies’ union contracts barred the state from investigating wage and hour disputes.
“I would like to think that the state of New York wants to see its laws enforced — and particularly labor laws protecting the most vulnerable workers in our society, who are doing some of the most valuable and difficult work,” Richard Blum, a labor attorney with the Legal Aid Society, which represents the aides in its case against the state, told THE CITY. “And yet, the state has worked vigorously to avoid doing just that.”
The order is the latest chapter in the decade-long crusade to end New York rules that allow 24-hour home care workers to be paid for only 13 hours a day, under the condition they get three hours for meal breaks and at least five uninterrupted hours of sleep. But workers claim they routinely work up to 96 straight hours without rest — while only getting paid for a fraction of that time.
A spokesperson for the state labor department declined to comment on Lynch’s order because the case is ongoing.
Workers and advocates in the predominantly immigrant and female industry have called the practice akin to “racist violence.” Local and state lawmakers have pushed to ensure full 24-hour pay, which opponents say would balloon the state’s already sky-high health costs and put vulnerable patients at risk.
Last month, Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Chinatown) reintroduced a bill that would cap shifts at 12 hours per day, or no more than 56 hours per week, unless workers receive two weeks’ notice from their employer. He first introduced the bill in 2022, but it failed to advance the Council’s labor committee. The bill’s newest version only has a dozen co-sponsors.
Approximately 30 people, many of them immigrant home care workers from China and Latin America, testified at the Feb. 18 City Council hearing pleading with lawmakers to pass Marte’s proposal. Workers and advocates with the Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association told THE CITY that home care aides will stage an indefinite sit-in at City Hall beginning March 18 if the council does not approve Marte’s bill.
Li Chen testified that she usually worked six consecutive days each week and never slept more than an hour or two at a time. Through an interpreter, she described the toll her work took on her body and health.
“After doing this for five to six years, my body collapsed. I had heart surgery, bile duct removal surgery and surgery on my leg,” she said. “My doctor told me that if I wanted to survive, I had to immediately stop working 24-hour shifts and stop staying up all night.”
Assemblymember Ron Kim (D-Flushing), who in 2021 published a scathing 103-page report detailing the scale of wage theft in the home care industry, also testified in favor of the bill. He described the status quo as a “very complex and broken system.” Kim did not respond to THE CITY’s request for comment.
But some advocates, including legal experts representing workers’ wage theft claims before the state labor department, believe that without state-level reforms, Marte’s city-level bill risks destabilizing care for some of New York’s most vulnerable patients.
Home care programs are administered by for- and non-profit organizations that receive state funding through Medicaid, over which the City Council has no control. State lawmakers have long opposed similar statewide proposals to split up 24-hour shifts over concerns that, without additional funding, expanded worker protections could cause nonprofit agencies to risk insolvency, cost workers their jobs and leave vulnerable patients without the care they need.
The Legal Aid Society, which along with the National Center for Law and Economic Justice jointly represents Gui Zhu Chen and a dozen other named plaintiffs in the wage theft case, told THE CITY that it did not stand by the legislation Marte reintroduced last month because the proposal does not change the underlying state laws that created the 24-hour, live-in shift system. The organization also opposed Marte’s bill in 2022.
“Without corresponding state-level reforms and adequate funding, well-intentioned local legislation risks destabilizing care, potentially forcing medically fragile individuals into institutional settings or leaving them without essential services,” said Belkys Garcia, a staff attorney at the The Legal Aid Society civil law reform unit. “Policymakers must pursue comprehensive solutions that ensure workers are paid for all hours worked while safeguarding uninterrupted, community-based care.”
Simon Kostelanetz, a spokesperson for Marte, pushed back on Legal Aid’s assertions and said that the Council member and his allies “do not anticipate” that the bill will have “any significant fiscal impact,” noting that home care agencies elsewhere in the state have already established 8- or 12-hour shifts for patients needing 24-hour care.
“These agencies that have split shifts have not required any state Medicaid funding readjustment,” added Kostelanetz.
Of the approximately 300,000 home care workers in New York City, about 8 to 10% work 24-hour shifts, according to the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
At the Feb. 18 City Council hearing, DCWP external affairs director Carlos Ortiz said that the city supports the bill’s intent but that it has concerns that “prohibiting 24-hour shifts without additional Medicaid funding to home care providers could have unintended consequences for patients and workers.”
“If home care providers do not receive the funding to properly pay multiple workers to cover an entire day for a home care patient, care could be disrupted and less shifts could be available for workers,” he added.
Lai Yee Chan, a former home care worker, also filed wage theft complaints against her employer to the state labor department. She told THE CITY that she is “happy” with Judge Lynch’s order forcing the state to reopen her and others’ wage complaints.
But even if she gets the approximately $200,000 she claims she is owed in unpaid wages, no amount will be enough to make up for the health issues she’s accumulated after more than two decades providing round the clock care without breaks or rest. Chan, through an interpreter, described the sadness and disillusionment of walking away from a job she believed would help propel herself to the middle class and instead left her with twin diagnoses of insomnia and chronic pain.
“I had a bond with my patients, and I took pride in my work. I want all patients to get good care,” said Chan, 71. “But our health — no amount of money can buy that back.”
