Home care workers provide a valuable service for our community’s frail elderly individuals. They make sure that seniors can stay in their homes, safely and in good health, instead of forcing them to live in nursing homes or causing enormous stress to family members.
For about 13 hours a week, Sylvia Moreno takes care of her step-mother. Moreno helps with her step-mom’s grooming, does household tasks, runs errands, monitors her medication and offers her companionship.
“It’s emotional and it’s physical,” Moreno said of her job. “You have to deal with so much.”
Moreno said the emotional side of caregiving is the most difficult because she wants to do an excellent job in sometimes difficult circumstances.
“They are the most precious human beings,” Moreno said. “They are part of the generation that built Milwaukee and they deserve the best.”
Moreno works a second job because her limited hours and pay are only enough to supplement her income. Nationally, home care workers earn about $13,000 annually, not enough to live on without another source of income.
George Gholson takes care of a friend who has fallen ill. Gholson makes sure his friend’s house is neat and his clothes are washed. Gholson helps with his friend’s grooming and health care needs so that he’s feeling his best.
“He’s a great man,” Gholson said. “I care a lot about him and I make sure that he’s well taken-care of.”
Moreno and Gholson are trained home care workers employed by New Health Services (NHS), a nonprofit affiliate of the Milwaukee Center for Independence. NHS is one of Milwaukee County’s largest home health care agencies for elderly residents and those with disabilities who want to live at home. NHS utilizes the state’s Family Care funds for its home care workers, who work throughout the county in their clients’ private homes and are generally overlooked by the general public.
Moreno and Gholson are also members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Wisconsin, which they say is vital to their success on the job.
“The union is our voice,” Moreno said.
But that voice is being challenged in contract negotiations with NHS. The fight isn’t over pay or working conditions. It seems to be over the existence of the union itself.
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The Living Wage Fight
SEIU leadership say that the stalled negotiations with NHS is payback for their successful campaign last year for a living wage ordinance at Milwaukee County, which applies to those who do business with the county, including home care agencies. The fight pitted unions against conservative supervisors, home care agencies and Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, who vetoed the ordinance only to have it over-ridden 12-6 by the board. Now, county employees and contracted employees earn a minimum of $11.66 an hour and SEIU is on the front lines of the fight for a $15 minimum wage. Economists point out that raising the wages of the lowest-paid workers is some of the best and most direct stimulus to bolster economic activity in lower income communities.
Agencies like NHS who employ home care workers don’t use their own money for program costs, including wages. Rather, Family Care pays the program costs and administrative fees, which flow through the county and to the agencies and their workers. While living wage opponents argued that higher wages would be hugely expensive and jeopardize Family Care, supporters pointed out that the program had $21 million in its reserve funds at the time of the living wage vote, which could or should be tapped to raise the wages of the county’s lowest-paid workers, and that NHS receives about $2 million annually for administration fees.
So when SEIU and NHS began negotiating a new contract for their members late last year, the living wage ordinance set the minimum bar for wages. NHS has offered proposals to make it more difficult for the union to retain current members, collect authorized dues deductions and sign up new members, as well as proposals to reduce current compensation in the form of discontinuing paid time off and reporting pay. Negotiations have been conducted throughout this year and the two sides will meet again to try to hammer out a deal on Oct. 23.
Union leaders say NHS wants the union to re-sign dues deduction cards for all of its members and use a union card that NHS designs. SEIU says this is not required as the cards members signed comply with the law. Getting new cards would be nearly impossible for SEIU to carry out for hundreds of workers, since home care workers don’t have a common workplace and are dispersed at individual homes throughout the county. On top of that, NHS wants to interrogate all home care workers who have signed up with the union to make sure that they truly want to be in the union. The agency also wants to limit the union’s contact with and ability to sign up workers at new employees’ orientation meetings.
“It’s retaliation for living wage,” said Dian Palmer, a former nurse and current president of SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin. “They just want the union gone.”
Attorney Barbara Quindel, who represents SEIU, said she hasn’t seen NHS’ requests during negotiations with other agencies and said they’d be difficult if not impossible to implement.
“It’s outrageous,” Quindel said. “The only reason is to bust the union. This would be bad enough with a workplace where you had all of the workers in one location. Here, they’re dispersed throughout the county. It’s a sham to get rid of the union.”
NHS didn’t comment on the dispute, but sent a statement to the Shepherd, saying, “New Health Services presented its last, best and final offer to representatives of the Service Employees International Union on July 30, 2015. To help both the union and New Health Services to finalize a contract, we requested the assistance of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. We are currently in the process of mediation and look forward to returning to the table on October 23.”
SEIU is also battling another big home care agency, Supportive Home Care Options, which stopped deducting union dues when it reached an apparent impasse with the union. That matter is before the National Labor Relations Board.
“They didn’t go through this charade of re-signing the cards and redesigning them and interrogating employees,” Quindel said. “They just said, we’re not doing it anymore.”
