How Home Care Workers Came Out of the Shadows

Caring for America—part feminist critique of the welfare state, part labor history, part organizing case study—is the story of home care workers, the fastest growing yet still mostly invisible segment of the nation’s labor force, and their complex relationship to the state. Mostly women and frequently welfare recipients, home care workers have typically bounced back and forth between government employment, private vendors, and work as independent providers and contractors. Bargaining power over wages has been miniscule, and, with private homes as worksites, working conditions have been difficult to monitor. This has put home care workers in a perpetually precarious position: one threatened, it often seems, from all sides. Home care workers are also at the intersection of an evolving labor movement and a welfare state under attack.