A lot of us in health care are part-timers for various reasons, and it’s not unusual to have two or three jobs. I have a supervisory position, which is nice, although on a bad day I tell myself that I couldn’t supervise my way out of a paper bag. I enjoy having the corporate jet whisk me in to work where I sit behind my mahogany desk receiving gifts and sharing power lunches with other nurses on expense accounts.

Okay, actually I drive from home to home and look at skin rashes or take client’s shoes off to see if they need a podiatrist. Their small dogs yap at me. But I like my work. I know what home health care workers do because I started out as a nurse’s aid.

It’s a job that requires trustworthiness, good judgement, clinical skills and endless patience. Everyone doing it should be paid better than they are, but the flexibility is good for mothers and people whose own elderly parents need them. It can be very rewarding emotionally.

I don’t think a job that is so labor and time-intensive is ever going to earn a large hourly wage unless the old people pull off a revolution. It is more concerning that so many workers are delivering health care when they themselves lack benefits.

I was talking to a home health aid and we discovered that we had both worked at the same nursing home. She was there for fifteen years and receives a small pension because she belonged to Health Care Workers 1199. It got me thinking of the typical situation of workers needing to put in a minimum number of months before they can even sign up for the company health plan. Small employers struggle to keep up with the rising costs of insurance, even as workers see the deduction from their paychecks go up. I hadn’t even thought about the post-retirement. There are quite a few people I work with who are over 65. Much as we all love our work, I’m sure they need the paycheck.

As a mature person I appreciate how much Medicare and Social Security helps me by helping my parents. I can go to work knowing that even though my parents invested more in us than in growing their wealth, they can live in dignity.

Everyone should have security in their old age. We need advocacy, from unions and lawmakers, for home health workers. The Supreme Court recently decided that employers do not have to pay minimum wage or overtime for workers in the home. If home care can be designated as a category of work that does not get the protection that most other workers take for granted it makes sense to organize.