Fair Wages for Home Care Workers Act in plain language

1: Short title

This section would let the Act be cited as the Fair Wages for Home Care Workers Act.

2: Minimum wage and overtime for certain caregivers

This section would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to narrow one wage and hour exemption, remove another, and add new definitions that decide who still qualifies for the narrower exemption.

In section 13 of that Act, the exemption in subsection (a)(15) currently covers an employee working on a casual basis in domestic service employment, using terms defined by regulations of the Secretary of Labor. This section would replace that language so the exemption instead covers only an employee working on a casual basis to provide babysitting services. This section would also repeal paragraph (21) of subsection (b) of section 13, removing the exemption listed there entirely.

This section would add two new definitions to section 3 of the Act. Babysitting services would mean the custodial care and protection of infants or children in or about a private home in which the infants or children reside. Babysitting services would not include care and protection of infants or children performed by trained personnel, such as registered, vocational, or practical nurses, or by home care workers, including home health aides and personal care aides. Casual basis, as it applies to babysitting services, would mean employment that is irregular or intermittent (as defined and delimited by the Secretary of Labor) and that is not performed by a person whose vocation is babysitting. Casual basis could still include household work not related to babysitting, as long as the time spent on that household work does not exceed 20 percent of the total hours worked while providing babysitting services.

Because home care workers, home health aides, and personal care aides would be excluded from the definition of babysitting services, they would not qualify for the casual basis exemption in section 13(a)(15), and the separate exemption in section 13(b)(21) they may have relied on would no longer exist. The stated purpose of this Act is to ensure that certain caregiving employees are no longer exempted from overtime and minimum wage protections, and these changes are how this section would carry that out.