Home Care Worker Seeks Overtime (US Supreme Court) Ruling

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4709908.html

April 12, 2007, 3:34PM
Home Care Worker Seeks Overtime Ruling

By PETE YOST Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Evelyn Coke spent more than two decades caring for the sick and infirm in their homes, working long hours in a physically demanding job that doesn't pay any overtime.

Now in failing health, Coke has become a symbol for the nation's 1 million home care workers, filing a lawsuit against her former employer that is now before the Supreme Court.

Coke is challenging a 1975 Labor Department regulation that exempts her industry from protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The law requires payment of "time and a half" for more than 40 hours of work in one week. Arguments in the case are Monday.

"I feel robbed," Coke, 73, said in an interview Thursday at her home in the Queens Borough of New York City. "I'm glad that it's come to everybody's attention; people are supposed to get paid when they work."

Coke, a single mother who raised five children, said she complained repeatedly to her employer over the years that she wasn't getting paid for all the hours she worked. It didn't do any good. She sued.

Despite what she feels was unfair treatment by her employer, "I don't regret taking care of old people," said Coke.

FULL story at link. I posted the NY Times story on this a few weeks ago.

[jwirr]

1. Now this is something I understand perfectly. 45 years full time

care for my daughter who would have been in foster or institutional care if I had not taken care of her. I would have been satisfied if they had merely seen to it that I had a living wage. Another thing that would have helped would have been social security coverage. Poverty in my old age has been the reward.