In California, cheers from SEIU and other homecare supporters over the state’s abandonment of a plan to slash wages for home health workers (“Wage Cuts Avoided for CA Home Care Workers“) gave way to renewed protests last week as the state revisited the plan after being told that it does not, in fact, violate the terms of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) (“U.S. backs off threat to withhold California stimulus money,” Los Angeles Times, May 20).
The new ruling came a day after California voters rejected a series of fiscal ballot initiatives intended by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to help fix the budget.
In response, Schwarzenegger brought back the plan to cut wages for home care workers and began announcing a series of draconian cuts to state programs that would include, among other things, the complete elimination of welfare and medical insurance for low-income families.
“I understand that these cuts are very painful and they affect real lives,” he said. “This is the harsh reality and the reality that we face. Sacramento is not Washington — we cannot print our own money. We can only spend what we have” (“California faces its day of fiscal reckoning,” Yahoo! News, May 23).
SEIU and others react
SEIU and other homecare advocates have been swift to respond. On May 22 more than 5,000 homecare providers, care recipients, and disability and senior advocates rallied in front of the California State building in downtown Los Angeles to protest the proposed cuts to the state’s home care program.
On Tuesday — the very day that Schwarzenegger outlined a plan to cut funding for even more state programs– SEIU launched a planned month of protests, began a 48-hour vigil on the grounds of the state capitol, and filed a class action lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the State of California and Fresno County from cutting home care worker wages and reducing care hours for seniors and people with disabilities. The suit charges that the cuts will put these people at risk and violate the ADA and federal Medicaid law.
On Wednesday the Los Angeles Times ran a letter from Pauline Beck, the California home care worker with whom Obama prominently spent a day during his presidential campaign in 2007, in which Beck pleads with the President not to let Schwarzenegger cut home care workers’ wages and hours. SEIU also began airing a television ad (see video at top of post) this week in the Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Fresno media markets, which shows presidential candidate Obama with Beck at her client’s home. The ad praises Obama for appreciating the commitment of home care workers to their clients and then challenges Gov. Schwarzenegger as someone who “doesn’t see [elders and people with disabilities] at all.”
Dr. Susan Chapman, associate professor at the University of California—San Francisco Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, warns that California’s health care workers may be overlooked. “Some of the importance of the home care issue gets lost in the overall picture of California’s giant fiscal crisis,” she told PHI.
She described the plan to take money away from California’s In-Home Supportive Services program as “short-sighted,” since “it may create a situation where more people have to resort to institutional care, which is far more expensive.”
She also said the negative impact on homecare workers themselves may hurt the state’s economy. “These people have to survive, and their wages are already so low that cutting them further will only make these workers more reliant on the state’s support services,” she said. “So for various reasons, it’s not clear at all that the governor’s plan will result in budgetary savings. In fact, it may end up losing money for the state in the long run.”
Hurting the powerless
Bernadette Lynch, president of California Association of Public Authorities for IHSS and executive director for Sacramento County IHSS Public Authority, told PHI the timing of the planned cuts could not be worse.
“IHSS provides services to hundreds of thousands of clients, and the economy is already devastating California’s families, so this isn’t a time to be cutting necessary support systems or reducing those already-small wages,” she said. “The current pay for homecare workers doesn’t even amount to a living wage at this point, except in one or two counties. Reducing it will end up causing a dearth of providers, which will hurt consumers. It’s devastating.”
She continued, “As always, it’s the people who tend to be less heard, who don’t have a voice, who are basically powerless, that will be hurt by this.”
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