Homecare: Joining Unions has Done Little for Low-wage Jobs

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Louis Carter is a card-carrying union member. Yet the Pasadena father of three has to hold down two jobs to make a living.

And he is not alone.

Perhaps nothing else exemplifies the challenges facing one of L.A.’s newest group of unionized employees than the plight of Carter and his fellow county home care workers.

In a much ballyhooed election two years ago, 74,000 of them voted overwhelmingly to join the Service Employees International Union. But these are far from the meat-and-potato union jobs of yesteryear.

The SEIU may be the fastest-growing union in one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, but service jobs are also low paid and home care workers are among the lowest of the low. Since unionizing in 1999, the workers have managed to win two pay hikes, raising their wages a full dollar an hour. But they still only make $6.75 an hour and not even all qualify for medical benefits.

And now an effort to raise their hourly pay to $7.50 has stalled over the unwillingness of the financially strapped county to pick up its 35 percent share of the raise from the state. Other counties have done so.

Arguing that the program saves the state money by keeping the elderly and disabled out of more costly nursing homes, L.A. County officials are insisting on a 20 percent/80 percent split.

Striking would only hurt the 100,000 or so elderly and disabled who rely on the workers for such basic care as bathing, dressing and feeding. So the SEIU has now decided to flex some of its political muscle another way.

It is vowing to put an initiative on the November 2002 county ballot that would gradually raise the workers’ pay to $12.50 an hour by 2005, while conferring full health benefits. Last year, the governor called for gradually raising the pay to $11.50 an hour by that time.

“We believe they don’t think we can be successful with this, but we are going to spend over $1 million to qualify it and it will get on the ballot,” said Tyrone Freeman, president of the home care workers union.

For Carter, who also works the night shift supervising a homeless shelter, a raise couldn’t come too soon.

“Being a low-income person, I have to start saving for Christmas now,” he said.

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