Protest Outside Julie Menin's Home Renews Fight To End 24-Hour Home Care Shifts

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY— Home care workers renewed their push to end 24-hour shifts Friday, rallying outside City Council Speaker Julie Menin's home.

More than 50 home care workers and supporters gathered behind barricades carrying signs reading "Abolish the 24-hour workday" and "Stop breaking families apart."

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They chanted "No More 24" and urged the City Council to bring Intro. 303, known as the No More 24 Act, to a vote after four years without final action.

Members of the coalition, Ain't I a Woman?!, said they will resume a hunger strike at City Hall on July 28 after pausing it in April because they believed the bill was nearing a vote.

"I want them to end 24-hour shifts and split them into two 12-hour shifts during the night and day," Brooklyn resident Xiulan Zhu, who spent 17 years as a home care worker, including 12 with 24-hour shifts,told amNY.

"That's better for patients and home care workers."

The legislation, introduced by Councilmember Christopher Marte in 2022, remains in the Committee on Civil Service and Labor.

The proposal would prohibit employers from assigning shifts longer than 12 hours within a 24-hour period and would impose $500-per-day penalties for violations.

Marte's Director of Public Affairs, Simon Kostelanetz, said the issue is personal for the councilmember.

"For days on end, he wouldn't see his mom," Kostelanetz said of Marte's mother, a home health aide. "When she did come home, she would basically only sleep. It's a personal issue to him in that regard."

City Council Speaker Julie Menin previously told workers she supports ending 24-hour workdays.

Her office reiterated to amNewYork that she remains committed to advancing legislation.

Menin has not publicly commented on the renewed demonstrations.

In April, after questions about whether Gov. Kathy Hochul had pressured the Speaker to delay the legislation, Menin's spokesperson, Benjamin Fang-Estrada, declined to discuss conversations between the two leaders.

"Home health aides are essential to the care and dignity of so many New Yorkers, yet they are too often expected to work excessive hours that lead to fatigue and burnout," Fang-Estrada wrote in a statement.

"Speaker Menin has long fought for strong worker protections and believes more must be done to prevent exploitation and ensure safe working conditions. This legislation is still going through the legislative process, which allows for thorough public engagement, input, and negotiation. The Council continues to have productive discussions with all stakeholders."

Some people who rely on live-in home care urged lawmakers to reconsider the bill, warning they could lose the around-the-clock care that allows them to remain in their homes unless the state changes Medicaid rules and provides more funding.

T.R. Cutugno, who uses a wheelchair and relies on in-home care, said the legislation does not address how Medicaid authorizes care, creating what she described as a gap between City enforcement and state policy.

"This is not an intersectional bill," Cutugno said. "I wouldn't have a life. I can't get out of bed."

Nina Bakoyiannis, of Brooklyn, said she agrees workers deserve better conditions, but believes the debate has become oversimplified.

"It is complicity in a system that pits marginalized groups against each other while the real structures causing harm remain unscathed," Bakoyiannis said. "Instead of engaging in that complexity, this issue has been flagged into a slogan with no nuanced discussion of the problem."

1199SEIU, which represents tens of thousands of home care workers, supports replacing 24-hour shifts with split shifts that compensate workers for every hour they provide care.

The union has not endorsed Intro. 303, saying the issue also requires action by the state and additional Medicaid funding.

DC 37, which represents about 5,000 home care workers, opposes the bill in its current form.

In a May statement, the union said Intro. 303 "could jeopardize their hard-won collective bargaining rights, health benefits and pensions."

The union also argued the proposal "puts home care workers and the nearly 13,000 disabled New Yorkers who rely on them at risk."

New York City employed 112,376 home care workers in 2021, according to the City Comptroller. About 89 percent of those workers were women, many of them women of color.

The Legal Aid Society reported that at least 13,000 New York City residents received 24-hour home care in 2022.

The No More 24 Act remains before the City Council Committee on Civil Service and Labor.