- 30 Years After they Rose Out of Obscurity and Poverty, Chicago Workers, Union Leaders Revisit the Campaign that Transformed the American Labor Movement
A campaign that catapulted home care workers out of the depths of poverty and reinvented the American labor movement will mark its 30th anniversary next week in the city where it began.
In 1983, a small, intrepid group of mostly African American women making as little as $1 an hour to provide care for seniors and people with disabilities, formed a union in Chicago, one of the first of its kind nationally.
They aimed to improve poverty-plagued working conditions in an industry that was regarded then as little more than babysitting. Three decades later, home care is one the fastest-growing professions in the country, as well as one of the few expanding sectors of the country's labor movement – a sea-change that historians have traced to the watershed unionization effort in Chicago.
On Saturday, September 7th, union leaders, home care workers and advocates for those who depend on this vital service will convene in Chicago for a commemoration of this labor landmark. The anniversary event, featuring panel discussions with historians, union leaders and advocates for seniors and people with disabilities, will take place from 10 AM to 12:30 PM at the offices of SEIU Healthcare HCIIMK at 2229 S. Halsted in Chicago.
"Thirty years ago, no one thought home care workers could be organized into a union, and even worse, no major labor organizations were even attempting to do it," said Keith Kelleher, President of SEIU HCIIMK and the organizer who launched and directed the Chicago campaign. "But home care workers exemplified the reason we have unions in the first place. They were performing valuable public services for seniors and people with disabilities – and yet legally they were treated as second-class citizens and floundering in poverty."
Home care encompasses a range of services – including food preparation, personal hygiene and medical assistance – that helps people who are aging or disabled live independently. Yet it remains exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act, the nation's core legal protection for workers. In 1983, home care workers in Illinois were paid the $3.35 minimum wage for some services – and only $1 an hour for others.
"Our primary job responsibility is to help seniors and people with disabilities live their lives independently, and yet we weren't making enough money to survive ourselves – not even the minimum wage in some case," said SEIU Chairperson Flora Johnson, a home care provider in Chicago. "We realized that the only way we could change these conditions is to unite together and demand dignity and respect from our lawmakers and our employers.
Applying techniques that were common to community organizing, but unconventional within the labor arena, the movement, known then as Local 880 of the United Labor Unions, formed alliances with advocates for seniors and people with disabilities.
Workers marched on the state legislature, staged sit-ins at the offices of lawmakers, engaged in civil disobedience and organized private work sites. Through these efforts, and the gains won in collective bargaining agreements, the wages forIllinois home care workers have more than tripled in the last three decades, from $1/hour to $13/hour in 2014. Along the way, home care workers have also secured health insurance and funding for professional training.
These dramatic improvements in job conditions have reduced chronic turnover in the profession, promoting stability for consumers and reaping hefty savings for Illinois' debt-plagued budget. According to figures supplied by the state, the average cost of home care is one-third of Illinois' average expenditure on institutional care.
"By organizing home care workers, we have helped bolster the state's economy on two fronts: tens of thousands of workers have ascended out of dire poverty, and the state is spending less money on nursing home care," Kelleher said.
But the legacy of the Chicago campaign has reverberated beyond Illinois. The organizing model used in Chicago became the catalyst to unionize home care workers, and later independent child care providers, across the country. Today, one in every three members of the SEIU – the country's fastest-growing union – is a home care or child care worker.
The anniversary event, featuring panel discussions with historians, union leaders and advocates for seniors and people with disabilities, will take place from 10 AM to 3 PM on September 7th at the offices of SEIU Healthcare HCIIMK at 2229 S. Halsted inChicago.
SOURCE SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana
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Replies
FELLOW HOME CARE WORKERS!
If the Federal Department of Labor's proposed changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act are put into effect, it will seriously reduce the take-home pay of countless numbers of homecare workers such as I and make the lives of the people with disabilities we assist less manageable.
The changes would require that homecare workers receive time and a half pay for every hour over 40 hours per week of work done. Medicaid/Medicare would bear most of the burden.
This sounds like it would be a major victory for homecare workers, right?
But where is the money to pay for this? If the law says we can't work without time and a half pay but the money's not there, then we won't be allowed to work those hours!
That means, instead of increasing our take-home pay, the proposal will slash all hours beyond 40 per week of our pay. For a worker currently working 48 hours per week, that's at least 416 hours and $4,742.40 per year he or she will lose.
And workers who currently put in 84 hours per week will suffer a 44 hour loss -- over half their pay!
Healthcare insurance will also be harder to qualify for since it's based on the number of hours worked.
As a result, many workers will be forced to seek out second or third jobs to make up the loss.
And, for the people we assist, their lives will be harder. They will endure a reduction in homecare hours or will have to tolorate more workers coming in and out of their homes or pay an unafordably higher deductable for the service or be forced to hire nonprofessionals. That means more poorly paid people in their homes with even less incentive to do a good job. Many people with disabilities have a hard enough time right now managing their assistants. Add to that an increase in the co-pay and the added strain will force many to give up and move into nursing homes.
Who benefits from this proposal? Certainly the nursing home industry. Also the homecare unions which will receive more dues-paying members even as all the members' average standard-of-living declines. Even the most poorly-paid worker in a closed shop is required to turn over at least $25.10 per month in union dues. That's a windfall for union coffers even as the average standard of living of the workers plummets.
And why should the unions support home care workers when the average nursing home worker, a nurse's aide, pays more dues than a home care worker?
What can we do? We can demand that, BEFORE this proposal is put into effect, funding for it be allocated and in place to begin payment immediately. Of course finding this money won't be easy. The federal government is 16 trillion dollars in debt (that's $16,000,000,000,000: a lot of zeros!) The states and municipalities aren't doing much better. But, until we are shown the money, this proposal is nothing but a shell game which promises a reward but leaves us worse off than before.
Please, my brothers and sisters, before too many of you fall for this pie-in-the-sky scheme, before the DOL proposal is shoved onto us, we must see the money.
Contact the White House (202-456-1111). Tell them, before they end the companion exemption, first SHOW US THE MONEY!
http://www.change.org/petitions/united-states-department-of-labor-d...
Thanks for your very informative response.