California - Fighting to Protect In-Home Care Services

UDW Homecare Providers Union/AFSCME (UDW/AFSCME) has won a key victory in its battle to prevent as many as 130,000 low-income seniors and the disabled from losing critical in-home care services.

San Francisco, California

UDW Homecare Providers Union/AFSCME (UDW/AFSCME) has won a key victory in its battle to prevent as many as 130,000 low-income seniors and the disabled from losing critical in-home care services.

Acting on a class action lawsuit brought by UDW/AFSCME, another union and four public interest law firms, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken issued a preliminary injunction in October stopping the state from changing rules that would have caused 40,000 people to lose in-home services, such as meal preparation and housekeeping, starting in November. Services for another 90,000 would have been significantly reduced.

The judge ruled that UDW/AFSCME and other plaintiffs in the case are likely to prove at trial that the state used inadequate standards to determine whose services would be cut.

“The war to prevent these outrageous cuts has just begun,” said Doug Moore, UDW/AFSCME’s executive director and an AFSCME Inter-national vice president. “The governor and his enablers in the state Legislature will continue to throw the state’s most vulnerable citizens under the bus unless and until the people of California, through the courts and at the ballot box, say ‘Enough.’ Judge Wilken’s ruling is an important first step in that direction.”