WORCESTER

Home care, personal care workers join Fight for $15

Jeremy Shulkin CORRESPONDENT
James Patin, a Clark University student with the group Socialist Alternative, leads a chant on Main Street in Worcester Tuesday April 14, 2015. A group, that includes local politicians, gathered on Main Street before boarding a bus for a larger protest in Boston.

Two types of health care workers — both paid less than $15 per hour — are attempting to raise their hourly pay with two different strategies. And they are riding a national push, called the "Fight For $15," a movement attempting to raise the salaries of all low-wage workers to $15 an hour.

Personal Care Assistants, or PCAs, earn about $13.38 per hour. About 32,000 PCAs are employed in Massachusetts, all paid by through the state's Medicaid health insurance program, and all covered by a union contract. They are seeking their pay raise to $15 per hour at the bargaining table, a tried-and-true strategy of unionized labor.

Home health care workers earn about $9 per hour. The 20,000 home care workers in the state are employed by 400 to 500 private companies. All together, these PCAs and home healthcare workers tend to more than 60,000 Massachusetts consumers.

The home health care workers, who are not unionized, are seeking to have their wages raised to $15. Without union representation and without a contract to negotiate, home-care workers are trying a decidedly different, and somewhat unusual, tack: They are seeking to have the minimum wage for their category of workers raised to $15 by the state Legislature.

The legislation would only apply to their category and would not raise the minimum wage for all workers or even all health care workers.

Some agencies may employ a couple of home health care workers, while others employ thousands. While data are not available to break down how many PCAs and home care workers live and work in the Worcester area, the Service Employees International Union estimates 4,000 to 5,000 PCAs in Central Massachusetts.

According to a report by the National Employment Law Project, which used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 2 million home care workers across the United States make an average annual salary of $18,598, compared with the $46,440 average for all workers.

The push for wage increases by these two categories of health care workers is being buoyed by the nationwide "Fight for $15" movement. The low-wage workers organized by the SEIU are seeking higher living wages from employers in industries such as home care, big box retail, fast-food chains and higher learning institutions. The campaign began in 2012, but earned notoriety last year as it centered on fast-food worker action.

"Fight for $15" rallies took place all over the country on April 14 as airport workers, adjunct professors, college students and their professors and other low-wage employees demonstrated in front of McDonald's franchises and marched through 200 cities, according to the SEIU.

Boston, which the SEIU billed as "the launch point for the largest ever global mobilization of the underpaid," had its own group of protesters, including Worcester college students and home care employees, snaking down Huntington Avenue and Tremont Street last week.

For home health care workers, state Sen. James T. Welch, D-West Springfield, and state Rep. Daniel Cullinane, D-Dorchester, have filed corresponding House and Senate bills that would require home care workers employed by a Massachusetts home care agency to receive $15 per hour within three years of the bill's passage. The bills would also create more regulatory oversight by the state over agencies that employ these workers.

"There's little to no regulation" of the industry, said Veronica Turner, executive vice president for Boston-based SEIU Local 1199.

A consumer using an agency for home care service may be billed $25 per hour for care, although their assigned worker may only receive a $10 per hour.

"Home care is going to be the fastest-growing area of employment in the next 20 years," said Ms. Turner. "We don't pay them a living wage."

She said these proposals have earned public support — especially those in the health care fields — and even local politicians like Worcester Mayor Joseph M. Petty have voiced their approval, but the agencies that employ these workers have their own concerns.

A number of agencies contacted for this report declined to comment, some citing the newness of these developments. Privately, home care agency owners worry that they — especially the smaller ones — will see profit margins shrink, or force the consumer to shoulder more of the cost of their care.

The Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts, a trade association with nearly 200 member agencies, released a statement before the recent "Fight for $15" demonstrations, saying that the alliance has long been in favor of wage increases for workers, but wants to see corresponding funding in the state budget. The state allocates over $300 million annually for home care services.

"We want to see compensation for workers rise and are advocating for just that in the FY 2016 budget," HCA Executive Director Patricia M. Kelleher said in a statement. "But without adding more funding into the (Executive Office of Elder Affairs) and MassHealth programs, the only way to fund this type of increase would be to reduce program hours and clients. In the end, this would hurt workers who might be paid a higher rate but have far less work."

Can legislators set a minimum wage for a specific category of worker?

According to employment and business lawyer Robert Adler, of Worcester law firm Seder & Chandler LLP, there's legal precedent — in the sense that prevailing wage laws for public construction projects, like new government and state university buildings — require builders to pay union wages. The argument for paying higher wages for government-funded construction work is that it is in the state's interest to employ skilled and fairly paid construction workers — and get a well-built building in return.

But is there enough legal precedent to require a prevailing wage for this particular industry?

"The question will be whether this will be a constitutional extension of the state's minimum wage law for one class of workers," Mr. Adler said. "You can stretch something to meet some theoretical state interest, but when does it become an unconstitutional stretch?"

Meanwhile, PCAs are attempting to earn pay raises to $15 per hour at the bargaining table.

Because they're paid through MassHealth, PCAs bargain for their contract, as do other unionized state employee sectors. They operate with little administrative overhead because they're paid directly from the state budget. The group's contract negotiations go through the Quality Homecare Workforce Council; most of its appointed board members are people with disabilities, or who use PCAs themselves.

Under their contract, PCAs do not have any opportunity to earn pay increases or bumps for seniority. They also don't earn health care benefits and only recently received paid sick leave — because of last year's ballot initiative, not through their contract.

The latest bargaining period started April 9, when the SEIU introduced its $15-per-hour wage proposal. The current PCA contract ends June 30.