YEDID Wins Class Action Suit for Health Care Workers
Class action approved: home health care workers´ salary is “less than minimum wage.”
“Our class action suit against home healthcare companies and the National Insurance Institute for not paying the salary to which home health care workers are entitled to for time spent traveling from client to client was approved for 105 million Shekels!”
She has worked as a home care aide in Tel Aviv for more than seven years.
Five days a week, she attends to her three elderly clients- preparing meals and baths, cleaning the house, scheduling doctors’ appointments and picking up medicine. Naomi often works 12-hour days for just seven hours’ pay because travel time between her elderly clients has not been paid.
Unable to rent alone in the city’s famously pricey housing market on her low pay of $9 an hour, she lives with her daughter and grandson.
Women such as Naomi, do important, demanding, and skilled work to enable individuals to live independently at home and that’s why I’m so proud of YEDID’s work on behalf of Israel’s women like Naomi and other poor.
Here are the Details:
Omri Ephraim, YNET
A class action lawsuit was approved in the amount of 105 million Shekels against home healthcare companies and the National Insurance Institute claiming that they do not pay the salary to which home health care workers are entitled for travel time from client to client.
After four years – a class action was approved in the amount of 105 million Shekels against home healthcare companies and the National Insurance Institute claiming that they do not pay the salary to which home health care workers are entitled for time spent traveling from client to client.
The class action was filed in the Jerusalem Regional Labor Court in 2011 by YEDID which sued to require 20 home healthcare companies operating throughout the country to pay their workers, and especially their female workers, for time which they waste in traveling from one client to another. In the course of the proceedings, more than 30 witnesses were questioned, most of whom were directors of 20 home healthcare companies, and representatives of the National Insurance Institute.
The judges determined in their decisions that the group to be included in the class action will comprise home healthcare workers who worked for the respondents in the 7 years preceding filing of this class action, and, in the course of their work, they attended to more than one client consecutively in one day, that the clients did not live in the same residence, and that the travel time from one client to another was more than 5 minutes.
“Unprecedented achievement”
It was also added that “another structural constraint in the home health care workers’ work is the method of paying their salary. These employees are hourly workers … it is inconceivable to deduct from the salary of any monthly employee whose position includes meetings outside the office – the time it takes to travel from the office to the meeting place.”
In response to the decision, Advocate Vardit Damari-Madar, Director of the Legal Department at YEDID said this is an unprecedented achievement for the benefit of the mainly women workers. “The court has undertaken vital and significant work from a social perspective and is correcting a long time injustice that was done to these workers, through nonpayment for travel time from one elderly client to another.”
Advocate Assaf Pink who specializes in filing class actions and who represented YEDID in the proceeding said that “the court decided to correct decades of injustice by approving this class action. It is amazing that, in the era of professional associations, none of them bothered to check the facts.”
The defendant are home health companies and non-profit agencies that serve approximately two thirds of the country’s home healthcare recipients, which today comprises between 80,000 and 100,000 clients. YEDID is representing a group of close to 35,000 home healthcare workers.
In the course of the proceedings, the National Insurance Institute was also included as a respondent as the court determined that this matter concerns a special area of employment greatly influenced by the National Insurance Institute.
YEDID Class Action Suit:
YEDID is representing approximately 35,000 home healthcare workers (who are primarily women) against 20 home healthcare companies and placement agencies operating throughout the country, with potential nationwide ramifications. The suit accuses these companies and agencies of violating Israel’s Employment Law by neglecting to pay their employees for time spent during the work day in transit from one patient to the next, and demands that the workers be paid for this time. After years of indefatigable efforts of YEDID’s lawyers and Legal Department, both sides have submitted their preliminary arguments for and against the class action suit. The court has finally approved this class action suit in the amount of 105 million NIS.
