Home-Care Workers Are Expected to Join Union

After ballots are counted Thursday, an estimated 74,000 Los Angeles County home-care workers, the people who dress, bathe and feed the county’s elderly and disabled for $5.75 an hour, are likely to have a union.

The mail-in vote follows a decade-long organizing drive by the Service Employees International Union that, if successful, will significantly boost labor’s share of public employees in Los Angeles.

It also will give home-care workers the kind of bargaining power that has helped others in California win pay raises and benefits such as health insurance and bus passes.

“We need better salaries and benefits,” said Maria Sigala of East Los Angeles, a home-care worker for six years. “We don’t even get sick days now.”

Advocates for the workers and the elderly say the union vote is part of a move toward standardizing and improving home-care services, which are likely to become increasingly prevalent as the California population ages.

The workers, primarily Latinas and African American women, provide basic at-home assistance such as cleaning and cooking and help with personal hygiene for people eligible for Social Security benefits. At least a third of them provide care for elderly or disabled members of their own families.

They are paid through the county by a mix of federal, state and local funds, while county eligibility workers determine how many hours each client requires. That can range from 20 hours a month to 16 hours a day.

Workers argue that the program, established in 1973, saves the state millions of dollars a year by keeping indigent patients out of costly care facilities. Using those savings to increase pay and benefits would create a more stable and safe work force, they say.

“A great many of us do truly care about the human being in the house,” said Maria de Anda of South Gate, who left a hotel job to care for her infirm grandmother 10 years ago. “We’re not maids. We do things no one wants to do.”

Home-care workers already have voted to join unions in five California counties: San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo. At least two of those counties have since raised wages, up to $7 per hour in San Francisco. In Santa Clara County, workers were given bus passes along with a $1 hourly pay hike.

With about 80,000 people served by home-care workers, Los Angeles represents the largest share by far of the 200,000 people served statewide.

The industry has been targeted for a decade by SEIU organizers, who helped bring together a coalition of workers, clients and religious organizations, staged rallies and protest marches, and worked on state and local legislation to ease the way for establishment of a union.

A 1993 state law permitted counties to establish public bodies to administer home-care programs; they can also negotiate contracts with unions. Los Angeles County in 1997 established its Personal Assistance Services Council, which is dominated by consumer representatives.

The council is establishing a registry of home-care workers. Clients now generally find workers through classified ads, church and community groups, or by word of mouth.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who wrote the 1997 ordinance that established the local council, said the union election is part of a process that will eventually standardize home-care services and improve conditions for workers.

“Without being organized, these workers are vulnerable,” he said. “They work unorthodox hours. They certainly have unorthodox demands placed on them by their clients. In order to protect their quality of life and the quality of their workplace, given the incredibly difficult work involved, it makes sense for them to be represented by a union.”

Consumer groups also were supportive. Bert MacLeech of the Congress of California Seniors and a member of the Personal Assistance Services Council, said: “I think this step is necessary in order to stabilize a labor force that has had a lot of turnover and a lot of problems. . . . If the vote is yes, I would welcome that as a step toward improving the service that we as consumers get.”

David Rolf, general manager of SEIU Local 434B and a key organizer of the campaign since the late 1980s, said he expects the union to win with 75% of the vote.

“This has implications that are fascinating and wonderful for the life of the labor movement,” he said. “We’re talking about low-wage workers, women of color and immigrant workers--the largest segment of the labor pool in Southern California. It’s this kind of work force that has to be brought into the labor movement.”

A union-backed state bill now in the Assembly would allow the state to increase its share of funding to cover any wage increases agreed to by local councils. A similar bill was passed in the Legislature last year but was vetoed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson.

About 74,000 ballots were mailed to home-care workers in Los Angeles County on Feb. 1. Ballots are due back by today. State mediators will oversee the count, and the results are expected by late Thursday.