Home care workers pact has bipartisan support

“This is one of the fastest-growing occupations in the nation. These jobs cannot be off-shored. They are not going anywhere.”

Jennifer Klein,

Yale University professor of contemporary labor history

HARTFORD — Denitra Pearson spends her days bathing, driving, lifting and cooking for elderly clients in New Haven.

She has been a home care worker for 20 years, but she only makes $13.50 an hour and lives on the edge of poverty with her five children.

But Pearson, 37, is hopeful a new contract between the state and her union that legislators will consider Wednesday will ease her stress and help her wallet.

“This contract will allow me to stop making tough choices like paying rent or buying groceries,” she said.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and a bipartisan group of legislators gave their support to the contract for the state’s 8,500 home care workers Tuesday.

The agreement would raise home care workers’ pay to $16.25 per hour by 2020. Most make under $14.25 per hour; some make less than $13.53, said officials from the home workers’ union, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.

The contract would also provide money for training and give the employees Workers Compensation by 2019.

“It is really about preparing our state for an aging population,” Malloy said in a news conference at the Capitol.

The number of people receiving care in their houses, instead of nursing homes, has risen by 20 percent since 2000, Malloy said.

But wages for their caretakers have been so low that workers are leaving the industry.

“What this second agreement does is make sure that we are going to have the workforce available to our senior citizens to allow them to live the rest of their lives as they choose to live,” he said.

Home care workers won the right to collectively bargain with the state in 2012.

They are not state employees, but private sector employees paid by the state’s Medicaid budget.

They do not receive a pension, retirement security or employer-based state health insurance.

Jennifer Klein, a Yale University professor of contemporary labor history, said home care workers have traditionally been left out of labor policy because they are predominantly women and often women of color.

Nevertheless, the work is essential for supporting an aging population, she said.

“This is one of the fastest growing occupations in the nation,” she said. “These jobs cannot be off-shored. They are not going anywhere.”

The news conference advocating for passage of the agreement was attended by top Senate Democrat and Republican leaders and many House Democrats.

The Senate — evenly split between Democrats and Republicans — and the House, in which Democrats have a 10 or 11-member edge (depending on the expected resignation of one member), are expected to vote on the contract Wednesday.