Long Shifts, No Sleep: Home Care Aides Sue Companies Over Working Conditions

This article was originally published in Medium. Read it here.

A group of 14 home care aides has filed a lawsuit against their former employer and the organizations that managed their patients’ health care plans.

The workers, who are Chinese immigrants, allege that they were underpaid, denied the ability to sleep properly for up to 96 hours at a time, and asked to sign documents that helped their employer cover up their situation.

The workers are suing GreatCare Inc., the company that hired them directly, and also CenterLight HealthCare, the firm that was in charge of the care plans. CenterLight is a defendant because “the state contracts the provision of home care services to these organizations” which in turn use agencies such as GreatCare to provide the staff for patients, said the workers’ lawyer, Carmela Huang.

The only managed-care organization currently named in the suit is CenterLight. Lawyers for the workers expect to establish at a later date which other managed-care agencies were involved.

Neither GreatCare nor CenterLight responded to multiple phone and email requests for comment.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 1 in the Southern District of New York’s federal court, alleges that aides were forced to work as many as four 24-hour shifts back-to-back while caring for elderly patients.

According to Huang, a senior attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, the aides were paid for only 13 hours per day despite plans that required them to assist around the clock.

“Very often we’ll see people who need, as part of their care plan, assistance with turning and repositioning of their body every two hours,” she said. “It’s literally written into the care plan.”

In New York, Huang said, managed-care organizations “are not allowed to authorize live-in care where the consumer’s needs are so high that the aide can’t get five hours of continuous sleep and an hour break at mealtimes.”

Workers often have to deal with little sleep for days at a time, said Vincent Cao, spokesperson for the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, which organized the aides and connected them with lawyers. “Usually when they work on the 24-hour cases, they have to work continuously for three to four days nonstop. That means, for those days you cannot leave the patient’s home,” Cao said.

In New York State, patients on Medicaid-funded plans who require near-constant care should get aides who work split shifts, according to the state Department of Health.

In one instance, the lawsuit alleges, workers caring for a patient identified as “Ms. Y.” were given a bed next to the patient “separated by just Ms. Y.’s bedside commode.” Aides had to help Ms. Y. to the toilet up to seven times per night, the lawsuit alleges.

Three of the plaintiffs, Zhu Lin, Xiu Zhu, and Zhan Li, were employed to care for a patient described as “Ms. C.” at various times between 2016 and March 2021, when the patient died.

Ms. C. lived in a studio apartment where, according to the suit, the only sleeping accommodation for the aides “was a stiff sofa a few steps away from Ms. C.’s bed that provided Plaintiffs with no privacy or respite.”

According to the complaint, Ms. C. had many serious health conditions, including dementia, and as a result had no set sleep schedule. The aides were required to attend to the patient frequently due to her risk of falls, and to check and change her every two to three hours, even during the nighttime.

When workers complained, the lawsuit alleges, their concerns were dismissed. Mei Chen, 68, who was employed by GreatCare between 2016 and 2017, reported to her coordinator that she couldn’t sleep at night. According to the suit, she was then told, “The work is just like this. Old people are just like this.”

The lawsuit also says that GreatCare took advantage of aides’ rudimentary English skills.

The workers allege they were often required to sign documents that misrepresented their working conditions.

Zhan Li, 62, who was employed by GreatCare between September 2016 and March 2021, signed documents which stated she received at least five hours of continuous sleep, even though that was not the case, the suit alleges. She did so because she believed it was necessary to keep her job.

This lawsuit is the latest in a number of legal and regulatory actions designed to address home care aides’ working conditions.

In 2020, the National Center for Law and Economic Justice filed a similar case against Brooklyn-based Scharome Cares Inc. on behalf of six former home care employees. The company ended up settling for $600,000, according to court documents. To Huang, this amount represented “almost everything they would have gotten if they had gone to court and prevailed.”

According to data released by the New York City Comptroller, the New York State Labor Department has recouped millions in unpaid wages and damages on behalf of home care aides in recent years.

Between 2020 and 2022, the 17 companies that owed their employees the most wages were all home care agencies.

Karen Yau from employment law firm Getman, Sweeney & Dunn is acting as co-counsel for the plaintiffs.