I am proud to introduce the Fair Wages for Home Care Workers Act with Senator Patty Murray to finally codify the minimum wage and overtime protections our home care workers deserve and prevent future attacks on their livelihoods.
Codify minimum wage and overtime protections for home care workers.
Occurrences
Evidence
Recent reporting says home-care aides in New York are still fighting mandatory 24-hour shifts and wage theft, and notes that a 2015 Department of Labor rule had already extended minimum wage and overtime protections.
Assessments
The promised outcome was statutory codification of minimum-wage and overtime protections for home care workers. Those protections were already extended at the federal level by a Department of Labor rule that took effect on January 1, 2015, before Ocasio-Cortez took office, but the available evidence does not show that she wrote, sponsored, or materially advanced a federal law that codified them. Reporting from May 18, 2026 also indicates the issue remains contested in practice, with wage-theft and 24-hour-shift disputes continuing. Because no federal statutory codification attributable to Ocasio-Cortez is shown, but she remains in office and the promise could still be completed later, the best judgment is unresolved rather than delivered or never.