Federal minimum wage and overtime protections will be extended to almost all home health care workers beginning January 2015, the U.S. Labor Department has announced.
The
new regulation, which was first proposed in December 2011, will remove an exemption from minimum wage and overtime requirements for home care workers who are hired through home care companies or other third party employers and provide “companionship services” to older and disabled Americans. Only those who are hired directly by individual clients or families will not be affected.
Interactive web tools, fact sheets and other information to help families, employers and workers understand the new requirements, and information about a series of webinars the Labor Department will hold to explain the new rule are available on its new
web portal.