Home-Care Workers Rally, Gain Support in Pay Issue

Los Angeles County home-care workers, fearful over losing out on a planned hike in the state’s minimum wage, won support Tuesday from county officials in their bid to increase their own $3.72 hourly pay.

About 50 home-care workers staged a rally at the Hall of Administration before addressing the Board of Supervisors to press their demand that they receive the $4.25-an-hour minimum wage recently approved by the state Industrial Welfare Commission.

The demonstrators, a tiny portion of the 40,000 workers who provide in-home care for the county’s elderly and disabled, voiced concern that the new minimum wage would not cover them because they are public employees and “personal attendants.” They said they believe that both categories are exempted from the minimum wage law.

Recommendation Promised

But Eddy Tanaka, director of the county Department of Public Social Services, told the group he sees no reason why they would not qualify for the new minimum wage when it takes effect next year, and he said he would recommend it.

Loren Suter, deputy director of the Adult and Family Services Division of the state Department of Social Services, gave a similar assurance in a telephone interview from Sacramento. Suter, whose agency oversees the state-funded home-care programs, said he had yet to see the wage order but did not expect it to exclude home-care workers.

“Historically, they have always been paid at least the minimum wage and, at the moment, I see no problem this time,” Suter said.

Assist 50,000

Home-care workers in Los Angeles assist more than 50,000 elderly and disabled people as part of the state’s largest home-care program. The workers--some of whom assist more than one person--cook, feed, bathe, dress and transport their clients.

One worker, Albertine Walker, told supervisors that home-care workers have become the “eyes, ears, feet and arms for these people”--all with meager compensation.

“We have no recognition at all of our work and we would like some recognition, respect, dignity and an increase in our wages,” Walker said to the applause from her fellow workers.

The home-care contingent, comprised primarily of black and Latino women, showed up at the board chambers carrying placards and sporting badges proclaiming “$4.25 or Fight.”

Lower Than Other Counties

Most are members of the Los Angeles Homecare Workers Union, which is affiliated with Local 434 of the Service Employees International Union. They say that their current $3.72 hourly pay lags behind what workers receive in some other counties, including San Francisco, which pays $4, and Santa Barbara, which pays $4.30. Orange County home-care workers also receive $3.72 an hour.

As the home-care workers pressed their case, they received a sympathetic response from Supervisor Ed Edelman, who praised the role they play.

“These people, unlike people working as selling clerks and gas station attendants, are working to help human beings with the basic necessities of care so they don’t end up in an institution and they can stay at home,” Edelman said.