Labor advocates late Wednesday praised a Georgia Supreme Court decision in favor of a class action by homecare workers.
The decision, handed down this week in Anderson et al v. Southern home Care Services, permitted a class action suit to go forward against the company, supporting the long-term goals to bolster wages and conditions for those workers, according to the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Home care workers were not included in the 1938 federal law that institute the minimum wage.
“Sometimes I have to travel an hour from one client to the next just to give a 15-minute shower,” said Precious Boston, a home care worker and member of the Atlanta chapter of the workers’ group. “We deserve proper compensation for all of the time that we work, and dignity and respect for the important work that we do.”
Many of the homecare workers provide services to people with disabilities and also to older people, so the demand for their services is likely to rise as baby boomers age, organizers said.
Average wages of homecare workers are below 133 percent of the federal poverty line, and it’s lower for many, said Lovette Kargbo-Thompson, an organizer for the group. “The majority of home care workers are women of color and increasingly immigrants, earning poverty wages.”
In a unanimous decision, David Nahmias, the Court’s chief justice wrote that there were two questions to be decided: whether home care workers are prevented by the 1938 law from being guaranteed a minimum wage, and whether they are prevented from a minimum wage guarantee by Georgia’s minimum wage law.
“We answer both of these questions no.”
Plaintiffs in the case were Margaret Anderson, Mary Dixon, Latasha Williams, and Kyonnie Sutherland.
Defendants in the case were Res–Care and Southern Home Care Services, which is one of its subsidiaries.
In discussing the federal law, the court found that the exemption was aimed at people doing work at the homes of their employers, not those working for a company that placed them into those homes to do the work.
Among other discussion of the Georgia law, Nahmias wrote, “It hardly seems absurd that the General Assembly would want such a minimal level of wage protection for this category of employee.”
