Archive for ‘California’

Direct Care Job Quality Improvement Act Introduced in the House and Senate!

Posted by on June 27th, 2011 at 5:30 pm | No Comments »

Last Friday, the Direct Care Job Quality Improvement Act was introduced in the U.S. House (HR 2341) and Senate (S. 1273) by Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and Sen. Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA).  The bill was submitted with 22 original co-sponsors in the House and in the Senate, Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, Tom Harkin also signed on as an original co-sponsor.

Rep. Sanchez released a statement on the importance and impact of the legislation stating “It is impossible to overstate the importance of direct care workers…They provide essential care and daily living services to more than 13 million elderly and disabled Americans.  They care for our parents and grandparents, but we don’t guarantee home care workers the minimum wage.  It is my hope that…” Read full release from Rep. Sanchez


State Budget Deficits are Causing a Care Crisis

Posted by on January 24th, 2011 at 1:05 pm | No Comments »

David Ward

In the wake of a slow economic recovery, state budget deficits are growing as unemployment remains high and state tax revenues continue to shrink.  States that have fallen victim to budget shortfalls are being forced consider cuts to human service programs at a time when people need them most.

The deficit crisis is not discriminating between states that are known for its spending and states that are noted for their fiscal restraint.  California, Illinois and New York  are all facing significant deficits.  But so is Texas, which is facing a $25 billion budget deficit.  Given its already lean budget, the Texas legislature is considering cutting Medicaid altogether.  This is at a time when nearly one in ten Americans are unemployed and more families are relying on safety net programs such as Medicaid.

California, on the other hand, has been battling budget problems for some time and has made multiple attempts to reduce reimbursements to state health care providers, including direct care workers.  In 2008, this effort was rebuked by Federal courts and now the Supreme Court is set to hear the case.   Many states, health and long-term care consumers and workers will be impacted by this ruling.

States are already taking action and health care and social services are on the chopping block. Continue reading »

To be a home care worker…and a recent immigrant

Posted by on April 26th, 2010 at 10:41 am | 1 Comment »

As an advocate for home care workers in the heart of the Los Angeles immigrant community, I work with hundreds of immigrant home care workers in my role as a leader and Associate Director of the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC). I attended a meeting in Houston from April 14-15, 2010, organized by the Department of Labor Office of Safety and Health Administration (DOL-OSHA), where Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis spoke about safety in the workplace. Immigration was a topic of the discussion as well, given that so many workers who face labor safety issues are recent immigrants to America. “Working without papers may be against the law, but it is NOT A DEATH SENTENCE!” said Secretary Solis. DOL statistics reveal that 14 immigrants die each day in the U.S. because of unsafe working conditions. Caregivers are among them.


Continue reading »

Real Wages Keep Falling for Personal and Home Care Aides

Posted by on September 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am | 1 Comment »

state chartbook coverAs every direct care worker advocate knows, personal and home care aides earn far too little for the important work they do. And now an updated version of PHI’s State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides (PDF) gives advocates a valuable tool, proving that real wages are actually getting worse.

The chart book analyzes data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, adjusting last year’s wages for inflation to see how their earning power compares to average wages in 1999.

Nationwide, these inflation-adjusted rates, which the chartbook calls “real wages,” have decreased by 3 percent over the past nine years, dropping from $7.50 an hour to just $7.31. Real wages increased in more than half the states during that period, but not enough to make up for their decline in the other 21.

Median wages in 2008 ranged from $7.05 an hour in Texas to $12.55 in Alaska in 2008, or real wages of $5.61 to $9.90. “Wages for personal and home care aides are so low,” says PHI Director of Policy Research Dorie Seavey, “that about 20 percent of these workers received a raise on July 24 when the minimum wage increased to $7.25/hour.”

The chartbook also compares wages to federal poverty level wages for a one-person household.

Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance

Study Finds Home Health Aides Particularly Vulnerable to Labor Law Violations

Posted by on September 8th, 2009 at 12:59 pm | 4 Comments »

Broken Promises coverMost low-wage workers put in some unpaid overtime, but home health aides are particularly likely not to be paid, according to a new study. “Home health care workers are especially vulnerable to violations, both because of the nature of the job and because they’re not fully covered by the protections that most of us take for granted,” said Annette Bernhardt, the policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project and one of the co-authors of Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America’s Cities.

The report is based on a survey of 4,387 workers in low-wage industries in the three largest U.S. cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. It found that employment and labor laws are “regularly and systematically violated” in home health care and other low-wage work settings.

“More than two-thirds (68 percent) of our sample experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week,” says the report’s executive summary. “The average worker lost $51, out of average weekly earnings of $339. Assuming a full-time, full-year work schedule, we estimate that these workers lost an average of $2,634 annually due to workplace violations, out of total earnings of $17,616.”

While home health aides were less likely (12%) than the average low-wage worker (26%) to earn less than minimum wage, they were more likely not to be paid extra if they put in more than 40 hours a week. Of the home health aides who had worked overtime in the previous week, 83% were not paid extra for that time, compared to 76 percent of the workers overall who had put in overtime. Continue reading »

DCA Publishes Fact Sheets for Direct Care Worker Advocates and their Allies

Posted by on June 25th, 2009 at 10:56 am | No Comments »

A full set of DCA Direct Care Fact Sheets, one for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, is now available in the Resources section of our website.

The one-page sheets were created as a resource for direct care worker advocates and their allies, legislators, policymakers, members of the media, and others interested in direct care issues. They include key facts such as:

  •   The number of home health aides, nursing assistants, and personal and home care aides in the state in 2006 and the projected numbers of each in 2016
  •   The average hourly wage for the state’s direct care workers
  •   What percentage of direct care workers in that state or region are without health insurance

Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance

Carework Network Issues Call for Papers

Posted by on March 30th, 2009 at 7:03 pm | No Comments »

carework-network-logo2If you’ve got something to say about how social forces such as gender, race, and class affect our ability to give and receive care, or about how activists and experts from different disciplines can contribute to the understanding of care work, the Carework Network wants to hear from you.

The network is seeking papers for its 2009 conference, a one-day conference that brings together researchers, policymakers and advocates involved in various domains of carework (direct care, child care, etc.)  The application deadline has been extended to April 20.

An international organization of care work researchers, policymakers, and advocates, The Carework Network is co-chaired by Direct Care Alliance Executive Director Leonila Vega. Its conference will be held this August in San Francisco.

DCA Small Grants Awards Announced today!

Posted by on October 12th, 2007 at 8:26 am | 1 Comment »

Small grants have been awarded to the Iowa Caregivers Association, Delaware Certified Nursing Assistants, The ARC of Mississippi and the Filipino Workers Association through a highly competitive request for proposal process. There were so many terrific proposals and we wish we could have funded several others. We hope unsuccessful applicants won’t be discouraged from applying again.

The grantees are:

Iowa Caregivers Association – They will develop and use a worker Leadership Council to recruit and retain association members.

Delaware Certified Nursing Assistants – This grantee will produce a video of certified nursing assistants in order to perform outreach through a newly developed association of direct care workers in Delaware. They are associated with the National Network of Career Nursing Assistants.

The Arc of Mississippi – This group will conduct 4 retreats for a total of 50 direct care workers and run a credentialing program of the National Alliance of Direct Support Professionals (NADSP).

Filipino Worker Association of Los Angeles California - This grantee will sponsor a “Courage Congress” to gain new members focusing on Filipino direct care workers in Los Angeles.