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PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release

Elders Vulnerable as Caregivers’ Real Wages Fall

Gas prices depressing workers’ already low wages to near minimum wage

Bronx, NY, August 11, 2008— Contradicting the law of supply and demand, America’s personal and home care aides are seeing their real wages (adjusted for inflation) decline as demand for their services rise. In its most recent publication, State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides, 1999-2006, PHI documents wage trends for all 50 states.

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The July issue of The Gerontologist is devoted to findings from the Better Jobs Better Care research and demonstration project. BJBC, which began in 2002 and ended in 2006, was the largest initiative in the nation ever created to address the high vacancy and turnover rates of direct-care workers by improving the quality of direct-care jobs. The initiative involved changing both public policy and employer practice. Demonstration grants were made to groups in Iowa, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.

A nine-page overview lays out how and why the project came into being, the problems affecting the direct-care workforce, and how awareness of and responsiveness to those problems is changing. The essay is by Robyn Stone (pictured), executive director of the Institute for the Future of Aging Services, and PHI President Steven Dawson. FAS and PHI conceived of BJBC and provided technical assistance to the grantees. Funding was supplied by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies.

Among the findings detailed in the issue:

• Direct-care workers across long-term settings identified more pay, improved communication, better supervision, and being treated with respect as the most important things employers could do to improve jobs.
• After accounting for satisfaction with wages, benefits, and advancement opportunities — good basic supervision was most important in affecting CNAs to stay in their jobs.
• There is a positive correlation between CNA job commitment and resident satisfaction.
• After accounting for satisfaction with wages, benefits, and advancement opportunities, good basic supervision was the most important factor behind commitment to the job. Read the full story

A nursing home owner in the Bronx was arrested for failing to provide worker’s compensation for her employees. According to the August 7 issue of Crain’s New York Business, Helen Sieger was the first person in the state to be charged under the law, which makes it a felony for employers to fail to have workers’ compensation coverage for their employees.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Sieger failed to provide workers’ compensation insurance for hundreds of workers for more than a year, from late May 2007 to the end of this June. She was arrested on Wednesday.

Sieger is the owner and chief executive of the Kingsbridge Heights Care and Rehabilitation Center, whose workers have been on strike for six months, ever since Sieger stopped paying into their health care fund.

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org

Subscribe to the HCHCW newsletter

We’ve been covering news from our Health Care for Health Care Workers (HCHCW) campaign in PHI’s news stories and Quality Care/Quality Jobs newsletter ever since the campaign started years ago — and we’ll keep on covering the really big stories, since PHI’s beat is whatever affects the direct-care workforce.

But now HCHCW has launched its own free biweekly e-newsletter. The HCHCW newsletter drills deeper than anything else you’ll find into the shortage of affordable, quality health care coverage for direct-care workers. It analyzes the problem, explores solutions, describes the progress of the HCHCW campaign and its partner organizations, provides links to valuable resources, and more.

If you care about this crisis and want to keep up with the latest developments and strategies, you’ll want to add your name to their list.

Check out past issues

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org

ANCOR is inviting direct support professionals and their supporters to rally in Washington, D.C. next month to show their support for H.R. 1279 (pdf).

DSPs to DC will convene workers, people with disabilities and their family members, providers, and advocates to “deliver a unified message about the direct support workforce crisis and the need to pass legislation to help stabilize this critical workforce,” according to an ANCOR email. The event will be held on September 8 and 9, in conjunction with ANCOR’s Governmental Activities Seminar.

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 Wages for personal and home care aides have never been high – and they’re getting lower nationwide. Between 1999 and 2006, real wages for these workers fell by 4 percent nationwide.

State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides, 1999-2006, (pdf) a new PHI publication by Director of Policy Research Dorie Seavey, looks at the buying power of the wages earned by personal and home care aides between 1999 and 2006. It finds that their median wages nationwide increased by an average of just 2 percent a year while the rate of inflation grew faster, causing the 4 percent decline in real wages.

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