Home aides join pay war
Workers now in ‘Fight for $15’
HOME HEALTH care aide Rosemarie Rumbley makes $10 an hour caring for a woman who was paralyzed during routine back surgery — but when it comes to her own health insurance, she has to rely on Obamacare.
Rumbley, 57, raised two kids as a single mom by working 12 hours a day, seven days a week for most of their childhood.
When she started in the industry, she earned $3.35 an hour.
Now, she’s one of the 80,000 unionized city home health aides who make $10 — but another 70,000 nonunion health care workers earn minimum wage, which until recently was $8 an hour.
“Listen, when you have people working, working hard, all day, and they can’t get health care or put food on the table or pay the rent, that’s a problem, a big problem” said Rumbley. “And that’s all of us, that’s where we are.”
According to George Gresham, head of the powerful 1199 SEIU health care workers union, the pay for aides like Rumbley is “incredibly, painfully low.”
That’s why Gresham, a close political ally and early endorser of Mayor de Blasio, is bringing home health care workers into the Fight for $15, a national movement to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
“We’re going to be out there on April 15, alongside the construction workers and all the others,” he said.
“As a matter of fact, if I’d been leading this movement, I would have started with the home health care aides, because so many people rely on them to care for their families, they trust them and when they learn what they make, they are shocked,” he said.
Gresham, whose mother was a home care aide, said he was heartened to see the historically insular construction trades had joined the Fight for $15 movement. “Their voice broadens the discussion and we’re happy to march alongside them,” he said.
There are about 150,000 home health care aides in the city — most of them women, and predominantly women of color. Of those, 80,000 are in 1199 SEIU.
Along with their higher wages, 1199 home care workers who clock at least 100 hours a month also are eligible for health insurance.
The nonunion aides get lower pay and no benefits — in one of the nation’s fastest-growing industries.
“Our sign for this march says ‘Invisible No More,’ ” Gresham said. “We’re marching with union and nonunion health aides (because) so many of us rely on or are going to rely on the care these workers provide. We can’t ignore that they have needs, too.”