Hope for home-care workers.

• Author: Kalet, Hank

SHELLY SAYS SHE HAS IT comparatively easy She works for a single client, a quadriplegic whose family remains involved with her care, and she puts in forty hours a week--something she says is a rarity for people in the rural Ohio region in which she lives and works.

While the client s mother does a lot of the cooking, and family members help with other tasks, Shelly is the primary care provider for the disabled woman. Shelly feeds her, brushes her teeth, washes her face, and combs her hair. She helps her go to the toilet, gets her dressed, and eases her into and out of her wheelchair.

"Once were settled in, I sit and wait for her to ask me to do something," says Shelly, who asks that her last name not be used. "I give her water, coffee. Because she cant rub her eyes or scratch her nose, that is an important part of my job. I'm her handmaiden."

Shelly says she loves the job--"you have to or you shouldn't be doing it"--but "it's a difficult way to make a living, when you aren't compensated what you should be."

"Most home-care givers feel a responsibility for the people they care for," she says. "If they get a call, they will drop anything and go."

She adds: "Because this is a job done by mostly minority women, we are not respected for the work we do and for the skills we have."

A 2011 report from the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute found that about 90 percent of home-care workers were women and about half were minorities. African Americans make up 35 percent of home-health aides and 22 percent of personal-care assistants; Latinos make up 8 percent of home-health aides and 18 percent of personal-care assistants.

Shelly works six hours a day Monday through Wednesday and then twenty-two hours on the weekend. For that, she earns $527 a week--and that is a lot, compared to others working in the home-care field.

Shelly is one of about 1.9 million home-health aides and personal-care assistants in the United States. They earn a median wage of $9.70 an hour ($20,170 per year), and the vast majority serve multiple clients. Most are not eligible for overtime, and many find themselves working the equivalent of sixteen-hour days, when time spent doing paperwork or driving from client to client is factored in.

That's why home-care workers and their advocates have been fighting to unionize in a number of states, while also putting pressure on the Obama Administration to finally reverse an exemption to federal law that keeps many home-care aides from earning minimum wage or overtime pay.

"This work...