Baby boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 a day, and because of advances in medicine, the elderly population is booming. Often these groups need help from home care workers -- an unregulated workforce that is often poorly paid and works inconsistent hours. 

A two-day summit in St. Louis starting Oct. 6 -- Caring Across Generations -- will for the first time bring domestic and home care workers together to find ways to professionalize their workforce with better pay and conditions, as their work becomes increasingly called on over the next decade.

Latin Post recently spoke to Ai-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and lead organizer and founder of Domestic Workers United, an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers and elderly caregivers in New York. And Ai-jen Poo is also the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur "Genius" Award and organizer of the Caring Across Generations summit.

Latin Post: You were the force behind organizing for Domestic Workers to get their rights recognized in a bill in New York State. The first law in the U.S. to guarantee workers overtime pay, three days' paid leave and legal protections from harassment and discrimination. What do people need to understand about domestic workers?

Ai-jen Poo: Domestic workers were this invisible workforce supporting families -- doing the work that makes all the work possible yet completely undervalued and very much in the shadows. And it is not that every worker was being abused or anything. It was more that you would have families that would treat you very well, pay a living wage, maybe even health insurance, to modern day slavery, human trafficking-type conditions, and lots in between and no real standards and nothing mediating the relationship. We needed to elevate the value of that work in society and in our economy and try to establish some basic protections.

LP: Why are you organizing the summit, Caring Across Generations, now?

AP: There are all these changes in our force, and in our demographics, unfolding. One being that more and more women are entering the workforce and the family care work is still necessary, and so there is more of a need of a paid care workforce to take care of children in the home, cleaning in the home, as the role of women in the force changes. 

As well as the aging of the baby boom generation, we call it the Elder Boom, because every day the baby boom generation turns 65 at a rate of 10,000 a day. That's 4 million people a year. On top of that, because of advances in health care and technology, people are living longer than ever, and the fastest-growing segment of this demographic is 87 and older.  

There is an explosion in the need that families have for care to support people across generations, and the workforce is growing as a result. A good number of that workforce is in the shadows, and everybody is working at poverty wages or near poverty wages. So there is an increasingly important workforce that we count on to take care of our families but who cannot take care of their own on these wages, and so we are in this situation that is completely unsustainable. We think this is an opportunity to turn the country's attention to how important this workforce is and how critical it is that we stabilize and strengthen this workforce because it supports the rest of the economy, and our working families functioning well and able to achieve their full potential.

The health care workers summit is the first time we are bringing together home care workers and domestic workers and caregivers who work in an underground, unregulated private pay care market together with the home care workforce that work through Medicaid and the publicly-funded system. We want to make sure that the voices of workers are at the table and helping to shape the future of care as the need for this work explodes in the economy. And we are trying to find answers to how to turn these jobs into good jobs, which are going to be so important in the 21st Century.  

LP: What else do you think will come out of discussions during the summit?

AP: We're hoping to create big, ambitious proposals that both improve the quality of these jobs like better wages, paid leave and paid sick days and benefits, and that high-quality affordable care is available to workers. A lot of families are struggling to afford the care they need, and if we are going to be paying these workers a living wage, we are going to have to take this on as a national priority to make sure the cost isn't born by workers or families alone. But it is a collective commitment that we have to invest in the workforce.

Another area where we want to take action is making sure there is implementation of the regulatory change that U.S. Department of Labor issued to bring home care workers under minimum wage and overtime protection. Right now they are not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act. We have make sure that as those changes are implemented that people don't have their services cut, and so we have to work with states to make sure they are budgeting for both higher pay but also to make sure that people who need the services are getting the hours they need. 

There will be advocacy at the state level to make sure we move forward on the advances that we've made, and then elevate the wages in this workforce to $15. We are going to be calling on elected leaders and also on employers to pose the question, "What would it take to get us to $15 an hour for this workforce?" So that people who take care of our families can take care of their own. And what support can we offer, can we offer tax credits for families who pay $15 or more? Home care workers earn approximately $9 an hour.

LP: What are you hearing from home care workers about the hours they work and wages they receive?

AP:  Sometimes home care workers are not getting enough hours of work, and then sometimes they are working too many hours around the clock, seven days a week. So there is very little control over hours and therefore their wages. And across the board, people don't have time to spend with their families and don't have the resources to adequately take care of their families.

There are 3 million direct care workers -- home house aids, nursing home workers, and home care workers, 2 million through public programs. Then we estimate there are about 500,000 elder care workers where no public funds [are] involved. The home care workforce is going to have to double. We are proposing 2 million new jobs in home are needed over the next decade just to meet the need and that may be an undercount. 

LP: Is there a personal reason you are doing this advocacy work?

AP: My mom and my grandmother are my role models, and I've always believed [in] investing in women and making sure that women have economic security. Opportunity has a powerful ripple effect on all of us. We have to make sure that these jobs that women hold, that are continuing to grow, are jobs that they can support their families on and have a dignified future.  

My grandmother is 88 years old, and she raised me when I was a small child. She taught me my first language, which is Mandarin, and she lives in Southern California, and she lives an independent life in her own apartment in a Chinese immigrant community. She has a really good life. She's able to go to church, spend time with friends, she plays mahjong. She's able to do a lot of things because she is supported by a home care worker. I want that for her, and I also want that for the home care worker who takes care of her that this family absolutely counts on. It's such important work. And its about honoring the people in our lives that we love and care about and making sure they have the support they need. 

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