WASHINGTON, April 13 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Tuesday, April 18, will be joined by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), chairman of the HELP Subcommittee on Children and Families, Ai-jen Poo, President of National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), and Mary Kay Henry, International President of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for a town hall at the U.S. Capitol on the crisis facing care workers across America.

“Care work is the work that makes all other work possible,” said Sanders. “Our economy does not function as we know it without the millions of workers who provide child care, home health care, direct care, and long-term care throughout this country. Yet still, in the year 2023, these skilled, dedicated, and essential workers too often go unseen, undervalued, and unprotected. That must change so that all care workers can have fair wages and the basic rights and dignity on the job that they deserve.”

Excluded from the protections of many employment and labor laws drafted throughout U.S. history, countless home care workers still go without basic workplace standards like overtime pay, safe working conditions, and protections against sexual harassment. Today, the care workforce at large represents millions of workers across the country, including 2.6 million home care workers, 2 million child care workers, and 2.1 million additional direct care workers. However, 40 percent of direct care workers live in or near poverty, 43 percent rely on public assistance programs to make ends meet, and more than 90 percent are women – disproportionately immigrants and women of color – who earn a median wage of $14 per hour. On average, child care workers make less than doggy daycare workers and pet sitters at just $13.31 per hour, and more than 50 percent rely on public assistance programs.

From 2011 to 2021, the home care workforce more than doubled in size, while nearly 60,000 child care workers left the sector during the pandemic and haven’t returned.

Details
What: Standing with Care Workers: A Town Hall on the Child and Home Care Worker Crisis in America
Who:

• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman, Senate HELP Committee
• Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Chairman, HELP Subcommittee on Children and Families
• Ai-jen Poo, President, National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA)
• Mary Kay Henry, International President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
• Miren Algorri, Early Childhood Educator, California
• Suzzane Ott, Home Care Worker, Pennsylvania
• Venice Sanders, Home Care Worker, North Carolina

When: 7:30 p.m. ET, Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Where: North Orientation Theater (CVC 249), First St SE, Washington, DC 20515
Note: The event will also be livestreamed at www.twitter.com/SenSanders and https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders