Liberation NYC stands with Home Care Aides! No More 24!
I. No More 24!
Nationwide, home care aides provide an essential service by caring for those who cannot care for themselves. Day in and day out, they help their clients with crucial tasks like: moving safely within their home, eating and drinking, using the bathroom and washing their body, and taking medication. Without these workers, clients would be forced from their homes and communities, and into institutions.
Unfortunately, the home care industry relies on intense worker exploitation. The workers themselves are mostly immigrant women of color. Here in NYC, they often hail from China, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, or the Caribbean. While it will likely not surprise readers that these workers receive shoddy treatment under American capitalism, the full extent of their exploitation might.
Some New York City home care agencies require their staff to perform 24-hour “straight shifts”, meaning the workers literally work 24 hours in a row with little to no rest. Sometimes, workers are assigned these shifts multiple days in a row. This means that for days on end, a client’s only source of care is someone who hasn’t been able to sleep for 24, 48, or 72 hours. This is not only absurdly cruel to the workers, but also endangers their clients.
To add insult to injury, these agencies often manipulate a loophole within industry regulations to steal nearly half of their workers’ wages. By falsely claiming that workers assigned to 24-hour shifts have sufficient opportunity to eat and sleep, agencies assert that they are only obligated to pay for 13 of the 24 hours worked. Over the past decade, this has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in wage theft.
“From working 24-hour shifts, I’m mentally fatigued and hurt all over, my hands, my fingers, my shoulders and back hurt. Years of 24-hour shifts, pushing wheelchairs, running their errands really takes a toll on you. My joints hurt all the time and I frequently need headache relief medication. Sleep is so difficult. I wake up frequently in the middle of the night.” - Testimony from Ms. Chen, who worked as a home attendant.
However, these workers have been fighting for over a decade to end these exploitative 24-hour shifts. Through a combination of workplace organizing, public pressure, and targeted lawsuits, they have forced many agencies across New York state and City to stop assigning 24-shifts and instead assign workers 12- or 8-hour “split shifts.” Not only has this greatly reduced wage theft and injury to workers’ bodies, it has resulted in safer care environments for clients.
Now, the workers and their allies have an incredible opportunity. A bill, Intro 303, has been introduced into the New York City Council, which would finally ban 24-hour shifts in New York City. A broad coalition has fought hard for this bill, with elderly workers even going on a week-long hunger strike, and it seems like victory is within reach. But the bill is being opposed by powerful capitalist interests, who seek to either kill the bill entirely or water it down to the point of irrelevance.
Liberation NYC stands wholeheartedly with the home care aides in fighting for an end to 24-hour shifts! No More 24!
Our Allies:
The No More 24 movement is being led by the Ain’t I a Woman?! coalition, which includes home care workers and an array of local organizations. Rank-and-file labor formations, retirees, students, and diaspora groups have all been long-term partners in this fight, as they recognize that the harms enacted on home care workers affect us all. Support for the movement has also been strong among many members within NYC-DSA, though the chapter’s leadership has refused to support the current bill.
Our Enemies:
No More 24 has three main public enemies.
First is the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), a “social services non-profit” with nearly $100 million in assets. CPC is a large-scale landlord and service provider who receives state Medicaid funding to hire home health aides for low-income clients. They routinely assign 24-shifts and lie about workers’ conditions, directly profiting by stealing workers’ wages.
Second is the workers’ union, 1199 SEIU. For several years now, 1199 has collaborated with CPC to try and deny home care workers most of their stolen wages. The union has similarly tried to use its electoral clout to pressure politicians to oppose Intro 303 and keep 24-shifts legal. While it may seem bizarre that a union would act against its workers’ interests, this behavior isn’t unusual across American labor history. The leadership of 1199 isn’t concerned with the most exploited minority of its membership. It is focused on preserving “labor peace” between the bosses and its membership as a whole, delivering routine (if insufficient) contract increases while suppressing worker militancy and real anti-capitalist struggle.
Third is the Legal Aid Society, NYC’s largest public defender agency. Like CPC and 1199, Legal Aid is an ostensibly progressive entity. Its lawyers even represented some home health care workers in wage theft claims against CPC! However, the agency’s leadership is currently opposed to Intro 303, falsely claiming that the bill would endanger clients’ care. At the end of the day, Legal Aid is simply another NGO operating within a capitalist framework. In the same way it previously opposed basic demands from its own employees’ union (link to: https://archive.ph/Tv87M), Legal Aid’s leadership currently stands against its former clients’ best interests.
II. Mass Line
The goal of ending the workers’ exploitation may seem obvious for people to get on board with — or at least, for socialists to get on board with. The true question is, how do we actually support the workers?
The answer is to follow the mass line.
First, we must recognize that workers have been fighting to end 24 hour shifts for over a decade! They are keenly aware of their exploitation, have the most experience fighting to end it, and at the end of the day, are the ones who bear the consequences of every delay or setback the movement faces — they are the ones who actually have to work the exploitative 24 hour shifts.
Unless you’ve been fighting with them all those years, you don’t know better than them.
So if you learned about No More 24 recently and are now suddenly filled with “ideas” of what the workers could be doing differently, there’s some things you need to do first:
- Take a step back. Don’t go rushing to do your own thing on your own. Fight with the workers, not simply for them. If you come up with your own strategy and then try to impose it on them, nobody will follow you!
- Attend a meeting! Hear what the workers have to say! Make sure you listen instead of rushing to share your own ideas. Listen to the experiences of workers, and reflect on them.
- Ask questions! Not only is there important information you don’t know about, but there is also plenty you don’t know that you don’t know. Maybe your idea has been tried in the past but failed or stalled.
- Then, think. Given what you just heard, given what you just learned, is your previous idea really a good one? You now have more knowledge on the situation, and can better ground your perspective on the fight that’s already been going on.
- Finally, you may present your own analysis. If it has been grounded and influenced by the experiences shared by the workers you’ve talked to, then your analysis will not sound foreign to them. But then, you must listen again. Listen to what workers have to say about it, and take any considerations they have seriously.
- Afterwards, follow the strategy that was determined collectively. Maybe your idea was not accepted entirely. Maybe it wasn’t accepted at all. Regardless, it was heard and discussed, and now it’s time to follow what was decided.
The leaders of the No More 24 movement have been, and must be, the Home Care Aides themselves.
Leftist analysis of the situation certainly can be helpful, such as in identifying a particular contradiction at play and figuring out how to address it. But any analysis must be rooted in ideas obtained from the workers before it can be presented to the workers. “From the masses, to the masses.”
III. Status of the Campaign
Due to the fast-changing nature of the situation, this section will likely become outdated as new developments occur. Nonetheless, it is important to share the latest status of the campaign, as of May 9th, 2026.
First, City Council Speaker Julie Menin made a commitment to the workers to add the bill to the City Council agenda (for a vote) by May 14th. This bill, if passed, would go into effect by April 2027, allowing nearly a year for agencies to make the appropriate adjustments to end 24-hour shifts. It was Speaker Menin’s promise to bring this bill to a vote that convinced the workers to end their week-long hunger strike.
However, our enemies recently introduced an “amended” version of the bill. This version states that after April 2027, workers could still “consent” to 24-hour shifts, with a “study” being done to investigate how many workers are “consenting.” This amendment is an attempt by our enemies to redefine the narrative and respond to the pressure in a way that is favorable to them. It perpetuates the lie that workers “want” to work 24 hour shifts, to build legitimacy for ultimately keeping the shifts in place.
In reality, if this amended bill passes, workers will be forced to “consent” to the 24-hour shifts or risk losing their job entirely. A worker cannot “consent” to working 24-hour shifts just as a worker cannot “consent” to working for less than minimum wage. As a worker needs money to survive, the threat of losing that money could compel one to “agree” to something they really do not want, or else face the risk of death. An effective labor law must therefore not allow for the “option” for a worker to “agree” to an exploitative condition.
“When I requested split shifts, CPC told me ‘Tough luck, someone else will do it if you don’t want to.’ I worked 24-hour shifts in order to make a living and pay the rent. If you refuse to do 24-hour shifts, they’ll immediately cut you off from any work at all.” - Testimony from Gui Zhu Chen, who worked as a home attendant.
The No More 24 movement is rallying on Monday, May 11th to push back against this “amendment” to their bill. They are pressuring City Council representatives to introduce and pass the unamended version of the bill.
Liberation NYC stands against any attempt to add a “consent” clause to a bill prohibiting 24 hour shifts! Workers cannot “consent” to exploitation!
IV. Action Items
How can you get involved?
As mentioned, there will be a rally on Monday, May 11th. This will be at 11 a.m. at 199 Water Street. This is a protest of the Legal Aid Society.
Furthermore, there will be another rally on May 15th, at 12 p.m. at City Hall (Broadway and Murray Street). This is a rally to push for the passing of the No More 24 Act.
You can also join phonebanking:
Call your City Council representative to encourage them to support the real, unamended bill.
Call Speaker Julie Menin to tell her to introduce the unamended bill, and withdraw the amended bill with the “consent” language. You can reach Menin’s office at (212) 788-7210.
Call the City Council representatives who are in the Committee on Civil Service and Labor, since it has to pass the Committee before it can be brought to a vote. These representatives are Shirley Aldebol, Tiffany Cabán, James F. Gennaro, Ty Hankerson, Crystal Hudson, Mercedes Narcisse, and Frank Morano.
And finally, make sure you keep updated with the status of the campaign!
Visit NoMore24.org to see what the current asks are, along with any upcoming events and letter campaigns.
Liberation NYC proudly fights for No More 24! We stand together with all workers fighting against exploitation! And our coalition will win.
Liberation NYC
Comrades Lexie, Matt, Alina, Peter, & Will
