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When Cai Qiong Liu applied for a visa to come to the U.S., she told officials she was in search of a better life.

As soon as she arrived in 2005, Liu’s friend got her a job as a home health aide, which she kept for 18 years. For half of those years, Liu worked four to five consecutive 24-hour shifts a week, providing demanding live-in care for a patient who had suffered a stroke: helping her shower, go to the bathroom, and eat.

Liu said she had almost no time to sleep herself, and when she did, it was on an old couch next to her patient’s bed, where she’d have to wake up every two hours to turn the patient over to prevent bedsores.

Despite being on call for the 24 hours she worked, Liu was only paid for 13 hours, since New York Labor Law accounts for eight hours of sleep and three hours of meal time — a norm upheld in 2019 by the New York Court of Appeals.

“You talk about a better life, but you got to have good health to enjoy a better life,” Liu told Truthout in Cantonese through a translator. “I didn’t expect that in the United States, in such an advanced country, they would treat us like this with 24-hour workdays and end up destroying our health.”

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Out of the 38 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the U.S. is one of only four countries that does not have a statutory limit on hours worked per week.

Now, at 69, Liu is retired, but she still suffers from chronic back pain and headaches, and she says she believes the chronic sleep deprivation that she experienced during her years as a home care worker have caused permanent damage to her memory.

Liu is one of many home care workers who have been protesting near City Hall this spring, fighting for the New York City Council to pass the No More 24 Act, or Int 303, which would prohibit 24-hour home care shifts, as well as a workweek that exceeds 56 hours. Some home care workers have been advocating for the end of 24-hour shifts for over a decade.

The No More 24 bill was originally introduced by City Councilmember Christopher Marte in 2022. It stalled in the City Council under former Speaker Adrienne Adams, but the movement got renewed hope when Speaker Julie Menin promised to bring the bill to a vote in April of this year.

However, Menin failed to follow through on her pledge, and since then, around a dozen workers have started and ended two hunger strikes, lasting eight days each.

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Sarah Ahn, an advocate with the Ain’t I A Woman Campaign, a coalition organizing the No More 24 movement, told Truthout she believes 24-hour home care........

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