Most people take labor protections like the 40-hour work week, overtime, and the minimum wage for granted. Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted them 75 years ago, expanding the regulations to include workers initially left out even brought Democratic New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm and former Alabama Governor and segregationist George Wallace together to lobby for them.
Despite the fact that these very basic rules have been a mainstay of American life for decades, some workers still do not have them. People who work in home care, a difficult, physical job often done by women of color, have been shut out even as other groups of workers have been given these guarantees.
President Obama promised in 2011 to change that, but as Steve Kornacki pointed out on Saturday, the 2 million care workers in the United States are still waiting. Why has it taken so long, and what’s standing in the way of progress now?
Watch Steve Kornacki explain in full in the video above.
Meredith Clark
Meredith Clark is a freelance writer and editor. She was previously a senior news producer for "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj," a reporter with MSNBC.com, the digital politics and culture editor at Glamour and a senior news and politics editor at Refinery29. She has written for Vulture, Rolling Stone, Self, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast and Bustle. Recommended
