The Missouri Capitol Building in Jefferson City
PHI reported last fall (“Missouri Passes Quality Home Care Act,” November 6, 2008) that Missouri voters had overwhelmingly passed a measure to create a Quality Home Care Council, which would run a statewide registry of home care workers, coordinate backup services, offer training, and negotiate with workers over wages and benefits if they chose to form a union.
Now the AP reports (“Missouri unions seek to organize in-home care,” April 12) that Missouri’s Republican-led legislature is refusing to fund the council as SEIU, having teamed up with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), proceeds with efforts to organize Missouri’s 16,300 personal care attendants.
SEIU and AFSCME have jointly formed the new Missouri Home Care Union, which submitted a petition in March to become the state’s official representative of personal care attendants.
In what appears to be a direct response to the unions’ organizing campaign, Missouri’s House and Senate both refused to include funds for the Quality Home Care Council in the new state budget. Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon had recommended including $360,000 to pay for hiring and office expenses.
The Missouri Alliance for Home Care, the state trade association, opposed the ballot measure because they perceived it as a union measure, according to the organization’s executive director, Mary Schantz. “This ballot measure doesn’t have anything to do with helping people get home service,” she said. “It was an initiative of the SEIU to unionize the work force.”
Though Schantz expressed fear that a union could hurt those in need of personal care attendants by driving up costs, the home care authority model has been successful in several states in improving both the quality of jobs and quality of care.
In California, where consumers and labor worked together to establish the first public authorities for the In-Home Supportive Services program, unionization has increased wages and benefits for workers. Consumers, who hold the majority of seats on the authorities’ governing boards, have supported these wage and benefit increases because they have led to a far more stable and committed workforce.
Other states have followed this example, including Oregon, Washington, Michigan, and Massachusetts.
Why?
As an adult with a disability who lives in the the community and requires the assistance of a Personal Care Assistant on a daily bases to complete daily activities such as getting out of bed, getting dressed, bathing, cleaning house, toileting, etc. I have persoally experienced the difficulties of hiring PCA’s due to the shortage of dependable persons that are willing to be a PCA. The lack of persons willing to work as PCA’s in the community has everything to do with wages and benefits. Who is going to want to work as a Personal Care Assistant for $8.40 an hour and no benefits when they can work at McDonald’s for $9-$10 per hour plus benefits?