Home care workers provide a crucial bulwark between older adults and assisted living or nursing homes. They help seniors bathe and dress, make their meals and do their laundry, take them shopping or escort them to appointments, and do a host of other chores that allow them to live at home for as long as possible.

And for close to 40 years, they and other domestic workers have been excluded from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that mandates minimum wages and overtime pay for most other American workers.

The campaign to win federal protection for these workers, now nearly 2.5 million in number, has surged and waned over the years. The outgoing Clinton administration proposed revising the law; the incoming Bush administration shut the process down. An elderly New Yorker named Evelyn Coke, who’d never been paid overtime in her two decades caring for the elderly and sick, managed to get her case heard by the Supreme Court; it ruled against her on narrow grounds.

In December, the federal Department of Labor took the latest step when it proposed revising the Fair Labor Standards Act to include most home care aides. It wants comments from the public. Readers here have had considerable experience with home care; I hope you’ll let the regulators know what you think.

To e-mail your comments to the Labor Department, use this link.

To write snail mail, address your letter to:

    Mary Ziegler, Director
    Division of Regulations, Legislation, and Interpretation
    Wage and Hour Division
    U.S. Department of Labor, Room S-3502
    200 Constitution Avenue N.W.
    Washington, DC 20210

The last time we discussed this issue, some commenters thought it unfair to discriminate against this group of workers. “Everyone who works overtime deserves overtime pay,” said Curios, from Brooklyn. “It does not matter if you are sitting around ‘just in case’; you are not free to come and go.”

But others worried about families being able to afford home care. “This will have MAJOR unintended consequences,” wrote Cheryl A. Gajowski of Yorktown Heights, N.Y. “People who pay individually, unless they are wealthy, are going to cut hours because they will not be able to pay higher rates. Some will lose jobs. More people will hire off the books entirely.”

That’s the industry position. It argues that higher wages and, especially, overtime pay will put home care out of reach for many clients and cause agencies to cut workers’ hours. Yet 21 states have enacted minimum wage statutes for home care workers, and 15 mandate minimum wage and overtime pay, without any apparent crisis.

Moreover, these are demanding, poorly paid jobs with high injury rates and high turnover. If we don’t make them more attractive, will our aging nation be able to find the many additional home care workers we will need in the years ahead?

We can continue the conversation for as long as we want at The New Old Age. But the Labor Department has set a deadline for public comments on this proposed policy change. Weigh in by Feb. 27.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”