(NEW YORK CITY) - “Rain or shine, we persist,” said Lai Yee Chan, a former Home-Care Worker with the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), one of the largest Social Services Organizations in New York focusing on Chinese-American, Immigrant and Low-Income Communities.

The CPC has been one of the biggest facilitators of the 24-hour workday, a labor practice where Home Care Workers are assigned to the home of a patient who needs around-the-clock care, but who are only paid for 13 hours.

The 11 remaining hours, ostensibly catalogued as time for sleep and meals, are unpaid.

Over the years, these unpaid hours have amounted to $90 million in stolen wages, according to advocates.

For months, Chan and her colleagues have demonstrated outside the luxury tower that houses CPC's Suffolk Street Headquarters in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

“One full year has passed since we’ve been picketing every week. Most Women here are in their seventies, but we continue,” she said. 

CPC Workers have also been fighting against the 24-hour workday for almost a decade.

As a part of that struggle, they launched the No More 24 Campaign, working alongside Ain’t I A Woman, a coalition of Women Workers fighting Unfair Labor Practices in sweatshops, home-care work and offices. 

“I worked for twenty-four hours a day for eight years,” Chan said. “It’s very difficult work. The patients couldn’t get out of bed themselves, they lost their memories, they would have strokes. I had to get groceries for them, cook for them and take them to the doctor. If there were serious issues, I would be responsible for calling (911) and accompanying them to the hospital. And in the end, I would only get paid twelve or thirteen hours for every twenty-four-hour day I worked. They stole eleven hours from me.”

In response to her demands, the CPC sent $200 to Lai Yee Chan in 2014 for around 6,000 overtime hours.

Feeling disrespected by the meager settlement, Lai Yee Chan became a key leader in the fight against the 24-hour workday and the CPC.

To Continue Reading This Labor News Story, Go To: Home-care workers’ persevere in fight with nonprofit to end 24-hour shifts - The Chief