Opinion: Care work is essential. It’s time we treated careworkers that way

For many workers in California, Labor Day offers a long weekend—a chance to rest, spend time with family and reflect on the labor rights generations of workers fought to secure. 

But for California’s careworkers, Labor Day is simply another day on the job.

Across our state,In-Home Supportive Service (IHSS) providers help seniors, children and people living with disabilities with hygiene, dressing, eating, taking their medications and getting to medical appointments. Because the demand never stops, many home care providers remain on call throughout the day and night, often working more hours than they are paid for. Their dedication and sacrifice allows almost a million Californians to live safely and independently in their own homes.

Likewise, many family child care providers will also be working on Labor Day, because their doors are always open to families who need them. Before a parent clocks in for an early-morning shift at a grocery store, a child care provider has already opened their doors to their child. Or when a hospital employee works late into the night, a provider may be serving their child dinner or tucking them into bed. 

This vital care work lays the groundwork for other workers throughout our economy. Yet, because it takes place inside private homes, it is too often invisible to the public—and undervalued by policymakers. Despite this the care workers who sustain our communities are frequently denied the dignity, pay and protections their work deserves.

United Domestic Workers of America (UDW) is proudly a union of primarily women, and women of color, who continue to fight for fairness on the job. They know that the inequity between care work and other occupations is deeply rooted in our country’s history: Caregiving work has long been performed disproportionately by women,particularly Black women and other women of color. And when seminal federal labor protections were enacted during the New Deal, domestic workers wereexplicitly excluded from laws establishing protections like minimum-wage, overtime and collective-bargaining rights. 

Through decades of care workers’ tireless advocacy, California has established higher standards for care workers than most states. But the impacts of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans’ “Big Ugly Bill” are a direct attack on care workers, as funding for Medicaid and SNAP benefitsfaces major cuts. 

The 900,000 families that depend on IHSS, along with the tens of thousands of families whose children depend on nutrition assistance, and the workers who care for them, will all be hurt by these cuts. The contrast could not be any more stark: Policymakers took food out of low-income kids’ mouths, and care from seniors and people with disabilities to give billionaires another tax break. 

Care workers need champions now more than ever. That’s why California’s next governor must prioritize reinforcing a care system that values the people who make it run. That means increasing the budget for these vital programs, allowing workers to bargain collectively in a statewide union, raising wages across the state so care workers can afford to live in the communities they serve and providing ways for care workers to have respite so they can rest without leaving the people they care for unsupported. 

UDW has spent nearly 50 years fighting—and winning—for care providers. Together, home care and child care providers have won a voice on the job, improvements in wages and benefits and greater visibility of their contributions. 

But the fight is far from finished. Care workers are still seeking many of the same basic rights other workers have long taken for granted: a living wage, paid time off, adequate rest and access to health care. 

Labor Day should remind us that the rights we now consider fundamental were never simply given to working people. Workers organized and demanded respect.

Today, care workers are still carrying on the fight for respect and dignity, and it’s well beyond time for policymakers to listen to them.