Victory! Home Attendants Win Right to Demand 24 hours pay for 24 hours Worked!

Over a hundred home attendants from various NYC home care agencies and dozens of supporters convened at a workers’ center in Lower Manhattan Wednesday to celebrate several precedent-setting decisions issued in the past few weeks by the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division.  The decisions make the law clear:  it is illegal for employers to pay only 12 hours for 24-hour shifts.

For more than two years, home attendants who worked 24 hours a day for Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) and First Chinese Presbyterian (FCP) have been fighting against their employers to recover stolen wages. Home attendants in these cases were forced by employers to work grueling 24-hour shifts, and like Andryeyeva, Moreno and Tokhtaman, were only paid for 12 hours of work. When CPC and FCP home attendants went to their union, 1199 SEIU, to complain, the union not only ignored them, but went as far as to help the employers by signing a new collective bargaining agreement that prevents the home attendants from having their day in court. But the home attendants never gave up––instead they reached out to workers from other cases to continue fighting. They feel vindicated by the recent decisions.

The decisions were issued in the cases of Adriana Moreno v Future Care Health Services, Inc., Lilya Andryeyeva v New York Health Care, Inc. and Nina Tokhtaman v Human Care, LLC. The plaintiffs in all three cases were 24-hour home attendants who had not been paid for the overnight hours. The courts upheld the home attendants’ right to be paid for each of the 24 hours, “regardless of whether they were afforded opportunities for sleep and meals.”

Lai Yee Chan, a current CPC home attendant who attended the celebration today, said, “This is really good news for us! It means we will be able to get back the wages stolen from us by our agency. And it sends a warning to the companies that try to mess with workers’ hard-earned money. So it is good news not only for home attendants but also other workers across trades. We have been working 24-hour shifts for years, and many of us got injured due to long hours of work and became patients ourselves. This affects our quality of service, and therefore hurts both workers and the patients we are taking care of. We are demanding an end to the inhumane 24-hour shifts, and instead demanding a change to 12-hour shifts.”

A former FCP worker, Alvaro Ramirez, home attendant and member of the AIW campaign said, “Today, we are celebrating this victory as an important accomplishment. We will continue to fight and we are calling on all home attendants to unite with us and demand pay for all of the 24 hours worked and to stop mandatory overtime.”

The workers are asking other home attendants, regardless of agencies, whether in the union or not, to come out and join the campaign. They demand the agencies to pay back the stolen wages immediately and stop mandatory overtime.

Celebrate the Lunar New Year with CSWA!

Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association
Invites you to a Lunar New Year Celebration

Please join us for a day of festivities with family and friends as we bring in the Year of the Rooster with exhilarating musical performances, an amazing lion dance, a lunch buffet and raffle prizes!

Sunday 2:30pm
February 26, 2017
PS 124 (40 Division Street in Chinatown, Manhattan)

For more information or to RSVP: 212-334-2333

Chinatown & LES Reclaim Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Demand Mayor de Blasio Step Down for Racist Rezoning

January 16 – City Hall. (Image credits – Lanny Li, Destiny Mata)

The Citywide Alliance Against Displacement held a rally at City Hall to demand Mayor de Blasio step down for promoting racist rezoning plans that target communities of color and to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of fighting against racial and economic injustice all over the country. Around 500 protesters gathered to call on the mayor to step down. The Alliance said it chose this day to hold the rally to reclaim the day from politicians like Mayor de Blasio who use celebrations on this day to cover up their own racist policies.

Lai Yee Chan from Chinese Staff & Workers Association pointed to the impact on workers in the area. She said, “I’m a home attendant, who have been taking care of Chinese seniors and patients for years. If the low-income families in the Chinese community are being pushed out, we will lose our jobs as well. Whether in Chinatown, Brooklyn or Flushing, both seniors and us home attendants are the victims of displacement, because we will face job loss. The mayor is making our lives desperate.”

For more, visit the Coalition’s website at https://peoplefirstnyc.org/.

Hundreds protest at City Hall on December 7

December 7, 2016 at City Hall

The Chinatown Working Group(CWG) Rezoning Plan has gained wide support in the LES and Chinatown community and beyond. If passed, the plan will put height limits on new developments. It will stop luxury waterfront skyscrapers, like Extell and JDS. It will prevent the sale of public housing and require any housing on NYCHA land to be 100% low-income. It will protect residents and small businesses against displacement.

Hundreds of people from the community have been protesting monthly at City Hall.

Mayor de Blasio has been colluding with big developers to slice up the plan. The city was proposing to rezone a part of Chinatown and exclude the Lower East Side, leaving the majority Latino and African American residents in NYCHA and waterfront buildings unprotected. Mayor de Blasio is pitting Chinese against Latinos and African Americans, helping the developers to displace us all!
Our community–Chinese, Latino and African American–held a large demonstration at City Hall in October against discriminatory zoning policies. The protest successfully pushed the City to scrap their Chinatown-only plan. This is a great example of people power! Now we need to make sure that the City pass the full CWG Rezoning Plan immediately, and we will keep coming back to City Hall each month until they do!
In the wake of the national election, Mayor de Blasio is trying to repair his tattered image as a Mayor for the 1%, vowing to protect the people of color being targeted by Donald Trump. But the Mayor himself has been targeting low-income, people of color communities across the City such as East Harlem, Inwood/Washington Heights, East New York and the South Bronx for luxury development. These communities are also rising up against displacement and joining us. We cannot stand by a mayor who claims to be for the people yet pushes racist policies in our community.
All images: Lanny Li

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親愛的會員和朋友们：         2015 CSWA Picnic (2)

大家好！
夏季郊遊开始售票啦。
职工会邀请大家一起来度过愉快的假日。
今年郊遊選點在上州法克霊-罗斯福州立公园(Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park)。
公園离紐約市大約一個小時的車程。

公园里有游泳池、儿童游乐场、湖上划船、足球场、篮球场、排球场，
还有钓鱼等等（钓鱼爱好者自备工具）。游泳池开放，每人收费3元。(请自备储物柜锁)

郊遊租用豪華冷氣巴士。為方便工友，分別從華埠和布碌崙两地出發。
請各位會員和朋友，选定方便自己上車的地點去購票。本會會員和兒童享有優待票价。
请各位會員缴交2016年的会员费。
 如果喜歡燒烤的朋友，可以自備食物和野炊用品。
參加郊遊燒烤的工友，請向職工會報告人數以方便提供燒烤炭。
我们将在公园的5 B区范围作集中点。自己開車去郊遊的家庭，請通知我们并到本會取路線圖。私家車泊車費8元。
郊遊日期：2016年 8 月1 4日 (星期日)
開車時間：上午8時30分    (請勿遲到)
回程時間：下午5時
票    价： 會員 $15 ；非會員 $ 20；12岁以下兒童 $10
購票地點：華埠會所 格蘭街 345號 一樓（345 Grand St 1st FL）
（布碌崙上車的工友可以電話訂票）
上車地點：華埠會所 格蘭街 345 號 門前（345 Grand St 1st FL）
布碌崙 7大道 5411 號門前   (5411  7th Ave  Brooklyn)
查詢電話：212-334-2333

职工会需要你捐款支持工人的组织工作。工人的心意，多少不拘，人多力量
大，集腋成裘，真正体现我们工人互相关心、互相帮助的意义。敬请捐助。
□10元        □20元       □50元       □其他
支票抬头：C S W A
邮寄地址：345  Grand  St  # 1W
New York  NY  10002

WATCH THIS: Lai Yee Chan’s 24 Hour Shift

Do you think it’s right to force workers into arbitration? What about forcing workers to do overtime? Do you have ideas on how to promote the campaign or want to get involved?

You can:

  • Sign a petition to 1199SEIU here
  • Tweet the Ain’t I A Woman?! position paper on why we need to #Fightfor40 and #StopMandatoryOT to President Obama and any presidential candidate.
  • Get your organization to endorse the Ain’t I A Woman?! Campaign.
  • Contact the Ain’t I A Woman?! Campaign about how you are organizing in your community and/or invite Ain’t I A Woman?! to speak at your next event.

CPC forces home attendants to work 24 hours! Workers call on 1199 SEIU to stand with them, clean up their act!

Lai Yee Chan, a home attendant for Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), helped her patients day and night for over 15 years. During the day, she bathed and fed her patients. At night, she helped them get out of bed and go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. She could not leave her patient for even a second of her 24-hour shift. One day her daughter was locked out of her house, but Lai Yee was not allowed to go downstairs to give her daughter the key. Adding insult to injury, Lai Yee has not seen a pay increase in 8 years, is not paid for the 12 hours of work at night, except for a small fee, and is never paid overtime. Ultimately, workers like Lai Yee are paid about $5/hour, way less than the minimum wage.

1Bwqt0JTnGY3GXzR7X9bsmi_eb7d1-d6YoS9zGMwIn November, 2014, Lai Yee received a check from NYS Department Labor of about $200 for the 6,000 hours of overtime she worked from 2007 to 2013. Lai Yee went to her union, 1199 SEIU, for help. Union reps refused to file a grievance, and lied, telling her CPC was not required to pay overtime because CPC is a non-profit. Lai Yee and a few other workers were frustrated and decided that they wanted to speak out against the wage theft and mandatory overtime. With the support of Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association, in March 2015 they filed a class action against CPC and organized over a hundred co-workers to join them. CPC argued that the case should be arbitrated, according to their contract with the Union, and asked the court to dismiss the case. But in September 2015, New York State Supreme Court Judge Carol Edmead rejected the employer’s argument, stating that the contract’s arbitration clause was not specific enough to prevent workers from proceeding in court. She also affirmed their right to pursue pay for all hours worked.

Immediately after, the union shamelessly entered into an agreement with the employer to amend the contract making arbitration mandatory for any wage claims and prohibiting workers from representing other workers or the class. The amendment deprived workers of their right to a fair day in court. The new contract also cut the wages for all 24-hour-shift workers, instead of giving them their wage increase that was long overdue.

The union’s legal staff claimed the new contract was not being used to stop workers from pursuing the lawsuit, yet other union reps pushed hard for ratification of the new contract. Lai Yee and her coworkers felt compelled to speak out against this corrupt deal. When they complained about the amended contract at the ratification meeting, union reps called them “troublemakers” and attacked the workers who filed the lawsuit.

We demand the union stand by the workers instead of standing with CPC! We urge 1199 SEIU President George Gresham to clean house and remove the mandatory arbitration requirement from the union contract!

Do you want to support the home attendants to get justice and fight against mandatory overtime? Here’s what you can do:

  1. Get your organization to join the Ain’t I a Woman Campaign by visiting https://aintiawoman.org/endorse/
  2. Send a letter urging 1199 SEIU President George Gresham to clean house: 1199 Healthcare Workers East, 310 W 43rd St, New York, NY 10036
  3. Sign the petition online
  4. Speak out against Mandatory Overtime and for the Right to a 40-Hour Week
  5. Get involved and plan your own activities! Contact the campaign with any ideas at aiwcampaign@gmail.com!