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Washington State will need an additional 440,000 home care workers between now and 2030 to meet the rising demand for home care, according to a report on worker turnover published by SEIU Healthcare 775NW.

The SEIU’s projection assumes an annual turnover rate of 35 percent. Currently, home care worker turnover in Washington averages around 50 percent a year, the report states.

The report argues that turnover is so high because of:

• home care workers’ frustration with low wages;
• inconsistent, part-time hours;
• inadequate benefits; and
• a lack of career opportunities.

The authors of the report therefore recommend several steps to boost retention among home care workers in Washington, including:

• raising hourly wages to at least $17.58;
• developing strategies to ensure that workers have stable hours;
• improving the health insurance and retirement benefits available to workers;
• expanding the pool of home care workers who are eligible for such benefits; and
• creating career advancement opportunities.

State Budget Woes Linger

Implementing such steps, however, seems unlikely given the state’s current $2 billion budget shortfall, reports the Columbian.

Washington officials cited the state’s budgetary problems when it cut home care services by eight hours a month for certain Medicaid recipients.

On February 21, twelve home care workers associated with SEIU were arrested after staging a sit-in protest against these cuts at the state Office of Administrative Hearings in Vancouver, Washington.

The cuts, which took effect February 1, were enacted by the state Department of Social and Health Services via an emergency ruling, allowing it to bypass the state legislature.

– by Matthew Ozga

A superior court judge ruled on Dec. 2 that Washington State owes in-home caregivers nearly $100 million in back pay and interest.

The ruling could affect as many as 22,000 caregivers there, including home-care workers and paid family caregivers.

The workers filed a class action lawsuit against the state following its 2003 decision to reduce Medicaid payments by 15 percent to recipients who use live-in caregivers.

A 2007 State Supreme Court decision overturned the payment reduction, but did not compensate caregivers for the four years of lost earnings.

On Dec. 2, Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee ruled that the state still had to pay caregivers a total of $95.6 million in back pay and interest for those four years.

The state plans to appeal McPhee’s decision.

– by Matthew Ozga

On November 8, voters in Washington State overwhelmingly passed a ballot initiative that strengthens training requirements for most newly hired long-term care workers there.

Workers will now undergo 75 hours of state-mandated training, a significant increase from the previously required total of 34 hours.

PHI first wrote about the ballot initiative last month.

– by Matthew Ozga

Washington State residents will be able to vote on a ballot initiative in November that will impose new requirements on home care workers for training and background checks.

The measure, Initiative 1163 (pdf), requires home care aides to complete 75 hours of training in order to become certified. The requirements also apply to aides working in most community-based settings, such as adult family homes.

Currently, the minimum requirement for training hours for Washington State home care aides is just 34 hours.

Initiative 1163 further mandates that all long-term care workers undergo state and federal criminal background checks before beginning their employment.

The initiative is similar to a 2008 initiative, which passed by an overwhelming margin. The earlier ballot initiative, however, was never implemented by the legislature because of budget shortfalls.

The measure is sponsored by SEIU, and is the focus of a social media campaign called Yes on 1163. The campaign also includes a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Supporters submitted 340,000 signatures in order to get the initiative on the ballot, nearly 100,000 more than necessary.

Initiative 1163 is one of five ballot initiatives that Washington voters will decide on next month.

– by Matthew Ozga

Seattle City Hall

The Seattle City Council passed a bill on September 12 mandating that businesses with five or more employees provide their workers with at least five paid sick leave days per year.

Employees who are sick, need to take care of a sick family member, or are victims of domestic abuse and need to take time off to assist law enforcement or go to court will be able to do so without putting their job in jeopardy, beginning September 2012.

Seattle companies that employ more than 250 employees will be required to provide nine sick days to their employees. The number of paid sick days is determined on a sliding scale based on the size of the company.

Seattle is now the third city in the nation that requires paid sick leave, following San Francisco and Washington, DC.

Connecticut is the first and only state in the nation to have passed paid sick leave legislation.

Low-Wage Workers Often Have No Paid Sick Days

More than 44 million workers across the nation do not have paid sick days, according to Families Values at Work, a network of 15 state coalitions, which also reports that:

• three in five personal health care workers do not have paid sick days,
• only 19 percent of low-wage workers have access to paid sick days, and
• one in six workers have been fired or threatened with being fired for taking time off work because of personal illness or caring for an ill family member.

Without paid sick leave, many direct-care workers — 45 percent of whom live in households earning below 200 percent of the federal poverty level (pdf) — have to make difficult decisions about coming to work ill and perhaps exposing their clients to germs.

Family Values at Work states (pdf) that paid sick leave policy is an “essential job retention strategy” because it:

• allows ill workers to care for themselves rather than lose their jobs;
• reduces the spread of disease to co-workers and consumers; and
• increases employer productivity.

Paid Sick Leave Efforts Elsewhere in the Nation

Elsewhere in the nation, mandated paid sick leave is gaining momentum, but in some cities the policy has already been thwarted.

Denver voters will have a chance to decide whether paid sick time should be mandatory on a ballot initiative in early November. And, according to a Seattle Times article, proponents of paid sick leave in “Massachusetts and elsewhere” are trying to pass legislation. The Massachusetts governor and secretary of labor are in favor of the policy, Forbes reported.

Milwaukee’s council members and mayor passed a paid sick leave bill in 2008, but it was overridden in 2011 by state legislators who voted to take away local government’s authority to regulate family and medical leave.

Philadelphia’s City Council also passed a paid sick leave initiative but it was vetoed by the mayor this summer.

– by Deane Beebe

Washington State Capitol building in Olympia

Home care workers were among the more than a dozen people arrested at the Washington state capitol on April 7 while protesting the proposed 16 percent state budget cut to home care services.

The home care workers recommend that the state fill the $5.1 billion budget gap over the next two years by closing tax loopholes and corporate subsidies instead of making more cuts to home care.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer political columnist Joel Connelly penned a column featuring three home care workers who were arrested at the demonstration. The workers explain what the cuts in hours will mean to their clients who are elderly or living with disabilities and in need of services to continue living in their homes.

Though the arrested workers expressed more concern about their clients than themselves in the column, as many as 6,000 home care workers who make an average of $10 per hour would see a reduction in the number of hours they work as a result of the proposed cuts, according to SEIU 775NW. They will also be asked to pay more for their health coverage, putting affordable coverage out of reach, the union says.

It is expected that the state House and Senate will not be able to reconcile the differences in their budget-slashing proposals — $4.4 billion and $4.8 billion, respectively — by the Easter Sunday deadline and will have to call a special overtime session to reach a budget agreement.

A national analysis of home care workers and health care coverage is available in PHI Facts 4: Health Care Coverage for Direct Care Workers, 2009 Data Update (pdf).

– by Deane Beebe