FOR MORE than 20 years, Jamaican Evelyn Coke changed and fed the elderly and infirm Americans, often staying with her clients for days on end Coke liked helping people, she felt she was being 'robbed'. No matter how often she complained, she says, she couldn't persuade her employer to pay her for all the hours she worked.

Now Coke, herself elderly and infirm, hopes for restitution. She has sued her former employer in a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court today and could affect the livelihoods of the nation's one million home care aides, whose industry is exempt from having to pay overtime.

Coke, 73, is challenging a 1975 Labour Department regulation that exempts the industry from protections of the Fair Labour Standards Act. The law requires payment of 'time and a half' for more than 40 hours of work in one week.

Time for time and a half

"I'm glad that it's come to everybody's attention," said Coke, who raised five children on her own, in an interview with the Associated Press at her home in Queens (in New York) last week. "People are supposed to get paid when they work."

Ruling in Coke's favour, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the Labour Department rule, saying it's inconsistent with congressional intent and other Labour Department rules. Paying overtime would cost billions, the home care industry argues.

Coke's former employer, Long Island Care at Home Ltd., says it would experience "tremendous and unsustainable losses" if it had to comply with federal overtime rules.