More than 200 local home care workers approved an agreement
Thursday to join Service Employees International Union Local
817.
More than 200 local home care workers approved an agreement Thursday to join Service Employees International Union Local 817.
In what may be the largest gain in local union membership in recent years, more than 60 percent of the home care workers voted to approve the agreement.
“We are now the recognized bargaining unit for IHSS (In Home Supportive Services) workers,” SEIU Executive Director John Vellardita said. “They are joining the growing number of home health care workers in the state who are a part of SEIU.”
The vote means that about 250 new members will join SEIU, bringing the membership of Local 817 to more than 6,225. SEIU represents more than 150,000 of the 200,000 home care workers throughout the state, including approximately 435 county employees.
The vote was tallied Thursday by Kim Hawk of the San Benito County Elections Department, who acted as an independent third party.
With the vote in place, SEIU representatives will set up a meeting with the county’s bargaining team to begin work on a first contract for the home care professionals.
Vellardita said he does not expect the negotiations to be contentious.
“We feel comfortable with our relationship with the (county administrator’s) office,” he said.
Nannette Brashear, a home care worker and member organizer for Local 817, said winning the election marks the beginning of the long-overdue move in improving the wages and working conditions of home care workers – many of whom, Brashear said, work alone to provide in-home care for the sick and disabled in what is essentially hundreds of individual work sites.
The election is also part of a nationwide campaign to unionize home care workers.
The union election is the culmination of a year-long campaign among local home care workers. The issues that reportedly prompted them to join the union include low wages, lack of health care, lack of training and no workers compensation.
“Twenty years of being unrecognized, underpaid, with no benefits – essentially an invisible workforce – has made many of us frustrated and searching for solutions,” local home care worker Maria Lozoya said.
“I feel the union is the only way home care workers and our clients have the ability to be visible, to have a voice decision-makers will hear, and to press for improvements in the quality of care and working conditions,” she said.
Vellardita said the home care program saves taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
“On average, $20,000 to $40,000 per client per year savings by keeping seniors and people with disabilities out of nursing homes and in their own homes where they can live with dignity,” he said. “Home care workers deserve to be respected and live with dignity as well.”
