The New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office announced June 7 the $3 million to $4 million settlement of a lawsuit against Special Touch Home and Health Care Services, Inc. and its owner, Steven Ostrovsky, for failing to pay overtime wages to its home health care attendants.

According to the lawsuit, which was originally filed in March 2004, Special Touch Home’s health care attendants typically worked between 50 and 60 hours per week for an average wage

of $6.50 per hour. New York State law requires that these workers

should have been paid, $7.73 per hour (as a minimum) for time

worked beyond 40 hours per week. For example, if a home health care

aide in this case worked 60 hours, the aide would only receive 390 dollars instead of the 414.6 dollars required by law.

Spitzer expressed satisfaction that the "agreement will provide thousands of home

health care aides who have been employed by Special Touch since 1998

with the legally required overtime pay that they earned working long

hours taking care of the ill."

As many in the Russian community already know, a large portion of home

health care workers at Special Touch Home and many other agencies are

Russian immigrants.

I decided to call an old friend, Yefim N., who has

been working as an aide for 12 years. I wanted to see what the

situation was like at his, relatively successful agency.

”We also have never received overtime,” he said. “But since I have been

working for this company for so long, I earn 10 dollars per hour, and

11 dollars per hour for working on weekends.”

But when an aide must be with the patient 24 hours a day, Yefim said, the aide earns the usual

hourly wage for the first 12 hours. However, for the second 12 hours, he said that the aide earns 16 dollars – not per hour—but for the entire 12-hour period.

“We were given the following explanation by management, because

a home attendant would inevitably doze off during the night and

workers are not paid for sleeping. But apparently, in connection with

the lawsuit against Special Touch, our management declared that no one

is permitted to work more than 40 hour per week,” Yefim said. “As opposed to many

other agencies, our agency pays for benefits. But if someone earns 7 dollars per hour, even with paid benefits they are not in a position

to pay rent, let alone feed a family.”

Tanya V., who works at Stephen Ostrovsky's

Special Touch Home agency spoke to me on the phone, and the following is what she

described:

”Of course it's great that we will finally be paid what we are owed.

But after working with the agency for 4 years, I still only earn 7 dollars

per hour, no matter how many times I call the office to ask

for more. During the first three months of work after I finished my

training and was being tested, they only paid 3 dollars per hour,

with no benefits. This agency is only good for the fact that you will

never be without work. That's why many work 60, or 80 hours a week,

and some even work 100. Plus I can take as long a vacation as I need

to, and no one will look for me, though the vacation, of course, is

not paid. There are other agencies that give enough work for 5 days a

week but only 4 hours each day. On these wages you earn 120 dollars a

week. Ask yourself, can you live on such money?”

Another worker from the agency, Sveta B., explained to me over the

phone that there are two different types of agencies.

“One is the so-called 'city' agencies, and the others 'private.' There are 10

to 12 private agencies one of which is Special Touch. Their workers

are not unionized, but they don't fight for “cases,” there's always

plenty of work. Private agencies, as a rule, work on HHA (Home Health

Aid) programs, attending "post-hospital" patients. For every such

client the city gives 30 dollars per hour to the agency. But the

person who attends to the client, earns, as a rule, 7 dollars. City agencies

most often work according to the PCA (Personal Care Assistant)

program, where each client is allotted about 18 dollars per hour.

These agencies also provide benefits to the workers, but the drawback

here is the limited available hours.”

Something is wrong with a system that does not give an opportunity to

work and earn without squeezing. If we divide the Ostrovsky $3 million

by the average number of workers (2000), we will see that each will

likely get around 1,500 dollars for unpaid overtime. On the one hand,

it seems like nothing. On the other, it is better than nothing.