For Immediate Release
Thursday, October 19, 2000
Home Health Care Workers Rally at Legislature for Better Pay and Job Stability
TENTON, N.J. —More than 500 home health care workers rallied today at the New Jersey Capitol Complex to demand better pay, which they identify as the key to job stability for workers and better care for patients. The rally was sponsored by 1199/AFSCME, the union workers have asked to organize the rapidly growing home health care industry in New Jersey.
"We know 10,000 workers have left home health care in recent years, while the demand for home care services is projected to increase sharply," said 1199/AFSCME President Henry Nicholas. "Currently over 237,000 of New Jersey's most vulnerable seniors, disabled people and terminally ill patients need home health care. We are putting the lives of our loved ones in the hands of workers paid about the same as some workers in the fast-food industry."
The median pay of home health care workers is currently $8.09- to $8.44-per-hour, alarmingly low considering that New Jersey ranks the highest in the nation in housing costs.
In his address to rally goers, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, spoke of one such person Jamila Carter, a Newark home health care worker whose current patient is a 25-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis.
"The first time Jamila visited her, the woman and her apartment were in a state of pitiful, visible neglect," McEntee said. "Now the woman is clean, well-nourished and gets to and from her regular doctor's appointments because Jamila is there to be her link to the outside world."
McEntee continued: "Jamila provides this vital service, as she has done for five years, and yet she only makes $8-an-hour. This is a disgrace."
State legislators, including Senator Joseph F. Vitale, D-Woodbridge, and Assemblyman George F. Geist, R-Blackwood, also spoke in support of the workers. Legislators are being asked to raise reimbursement rates $1-per-hour for home heath care and nursing home workers, with an additional $.50-per-hour for benefits.
They are being asked to mandate the independent agencies and firms employing the workers pass along the entire increase to workers, after earlier problems where agencies kept the increase for administrative purposes. Legislators are also urged to require home health employers to respect workers' right to organize unions and bargain collectively.
The 1.3 million-member AFSCME has moved rapidly to organize home health care workers in California, Illinois and other states in addition to the New Jersey effort through Local 1199. Under McEntee's leadership, AFSCME councils and local unions are devoting unprecedented new resources to organizing, mostly in lower-paid public services where the need is greatest.
AFSCME is also a participant in the Direct Care Alliance, a newly formed national grassroots coalition of long-term care consumers, direct care workers (a category including home care and also nursing homes), and concerned employer groups.
