Care Workers Focus of Union Drive

By FRED ALVAREZ

March 31, 2002 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Caprice Kelton doesn’t consider herself a labor activist.

Even though she’s on the front lines of a countywide campaign to unionize low-paid home-care aides like herself, hers is a labor of love rather than a working-class crusade.

Kelton provides full-time care to her 63-year-old mother, who decades ago was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Kelton gets her mother up in the morning and puts her to bed each night. In between, she cooks for her, bathes her, dresses her and reads to her to pass the hours in their cramped Camarillo home.

And she does it all for pennies above minimum wage.

So when Ventura County’s largest labor union came calling, talking up the need for better wages and benefits, Kelton was among the first to sign up.

“I basically made this my career choice,” said Kelton, 40, who has been her mother’s paid caretaker for nearly two decades. “That’s a long time with no sick leave, no vacation, no retirement benefits. I just thought there had to be a better way.”

That sentiment appears to be picking up steam. There are more than 1,700 home-care aides across the county, people who cook and clean and provide other day-to-day help to low-income elderly and disabled clients for wages often insufficient to keep them out of poverty or off public assistance.

They work from a few hours a day to 40 hours a week, often caring for family members or friends under a state program launched in 1973 to keep the elderly and infirm living safely and independently in their homes.

Advocates say the program saves the state millions of dollars a year by keeping indigent clients out of more costly care facilities. But they say it also has created a vast low-wage work force across the state, one that has become a ready target for unionization efforts from San Francisco to San Diego.

Now it is Ventura County’s turn.

The Service Employees International Union, which has negotiated wage increases and health-care benefits for home-care providers in several California counties, is in the midst of an all-out blitz.

Going door-to-door, organizers have signed up about 200 workers and hope to bring another 600 into the fold by early summer. An election could then be held to allow SEIU to start negotiating for better wages and benefits.

The effort could take an important step forward this week, when the Board of Supervisors considers designating an employer of record--as required under a 1999 state law--to be responsible for screening, training and negotiating with home-care providers.

Those workers are now considered independent contractors and have no official employer with which they can bargain for wages and benefits.

Union leaders say their goal for next fiscal year is to bump home-care workers up to $9.50 an hour--a $2.39 increase from their current wage--and supply them with medical coverage, either through the county health-care system or another provider.

“The bulk of [these workers] are struggling to get by,” said Barry Hammitt, chief of the SEIU local in Ventura County.

“It would be pretty heartless not to do more for the people who care for those in our society who aren’t able to fend for themselves,” he said. “Our goal is to expose people to the union and convince them that there is something better coming for them.”

Daughter Aids Her 92-Year-Old Mother

Some days it’s an easy sell.

After a long walk down a dusty alley, scarred by graffiti and guarded by friendly dogs and a frisky lamb, SEIU organizer Danny Carrillo made his way last week to the modest El Rio home of Rosa Chairez.

Although she has looked after her 92-year-old mother for many years, Chairez only quit her jobs as a packinghouse worker and celery harvester a couple of years ago to join the state assistance program, which is funded by a mix of federal, state and county dollars.

“I thought it was my obligation,” Chairez said. “I didn’t want to get paid.”

In the politest terms possible, Carrillo was determined to make his point. He told Chairez it was her mother’s desire to live at home, and that by looking after her at home Chairez would be saving the state the money it would cost to pay for public nursing-home care.

“Everybody wins,” he told her. “And now we want to make sure you have the money you need to live. Nine dollars and 50 cents an hour isn’t a lot of money either, but it’s a beginning.”

Chairez was hooked. She signed a card authorizing SEIU to immediately deduct $10 a month from her paycheck for union dues. Carrillo handed her a fistful of union leaflets and sped off to his next appointment.

It doesn’t always go as well.

Racing against a self-imposed summer deadline, Carrillo and SEIU organizer Victoria Guajardo are visiting dozens of home-care workers each week, pitching the benefits of the campaign.

They hold regular meetings to bring new recruits up to speed on the organizing effort.

And they are encouraging as many home-care workers as possible to attend Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, where county leaders are set to discuss the issue at 10:30 a.m.

They get their share of rejection. But just as often they get people eager to sign up, especially in poorer households where home-care work is often a sole source of income and an extra dollar an hour can mean all the difference in making ends meet.

“It’s gaining momentum,” Carrillo said. “We’re headed in the right direction.”

Count Mary Campos among the converted.

The Piru resident quit her bus-driving job a few years ago to care for her 96-year-old mother. But she had already been part of the home-care program, joining in 1989 to look after her adult son, crippled by childhood illness and now, at 32, a quadriplegic.

She’s got them both under her roof 24 hours a day, though the state only pays her to care for each of them 60 hours a month.

At the current rate of $7.11 an hour, she clears less than $800 a month--not even enough, she says, to enroll in a health-care plan of her own.

“I can’t afford it so I don’t do it,” said Campos, who at age 60 has a pile of medical bills and plenty of medical needs of her own.

“I think there are people who believe we are not worthy of being paid more,” she said. “But they need to do this job for a while to see how hard it is.”

Hourly Pay for Workers May Rise

There is little debate about the value of the work that home-care aides provide.

But in these tough economic times, when both the state and county governments are staring down the barrel of budget deficits, there are serious issues to consider when talk turns to pay raises and adding benefits packages.

As part of the state budget bill crafted for fiscal 2000-01, Gov. Gray Davis agreed to annual pay hikes of $1 an hour for California’s more than 200,000 home-care providers--up to $11.50 an hour by fiscal 2004-05--as long as certain revenue targets were met.

Under that formula, hourly pay should rise to $9.50 an hour next fiscal year.

But Davis is yet to commit to next year’s pay raise, only including enough money in his preliminary budget to keep pace with a boost this year in the state minimum wage to $6.75 an hour.

Even if the governor earmarks the money for the wage increase, individual counties also must commit to paying a share of those costs.

Ventura County pays on average 22.4% of the home-care wage, and for the hourly wage to increase to $9.50 next year county leaders would have to agree to pick up that same percentage share.

Many of these issues are expected to be discussed Tuesday, when supervisors consider a recommendation to establish a public authority to serve as the official employer for the county’s home-care aides.

In addition to taking responsibility for the workers’ pay and benefits, the authority would be responsible for conducting background checks on home-care aides and creating a registry and referral service for the program’s more than 1,800 clients.

Supervisor John Flynn, the board chairman, said he supports creation of a public authority and the idea of pay raises and benefits for the home-care workers--if the money can be found.

“Minimum wage is not enough--they should be lifted economically, that is a moral imperative,” Flynn said. “I know times are tough, but we need to do everything we can to get them to where they want to be.”

Caprice Kelton knows all about tough times.

Each month, when her paychecks roll in for full-time care of her mother, she walks a financial tightrope frayed by shifting priorities. Kelton clears about $1,100 a month for the 283 care hours allotted her mother by the state. She pays for her own health insurance, at $280 a month.

And she scrapes together her share of the monthly mortgage payment for the home shared by herself, her daughter and her mother, Judy Bonham.

She takes no trips, takes no vacations. Haircuts are a luxury. And while retirement is still years away, she hasn’t saved one penny for what are supposed to be her golden years.

“It’s not easy, and I wouldn’t recommend it for the faint of heart,” said Kelton, who also has a part-time job as a campus supervisor at a Camarillo intermediate school.

“But you really can’t put a price on it. We’re talking about my mother, so you just wake up in the morning and do whatever is on your plate for that day.”

The days are long and often difficult. Multiple sclerosis is a degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system and can cause speech defects and loss of muscular coordination. Bonham was first diagnosed about 30 years ago, and her body has slowly been shutting down since.

She has lost use of her legs and her left hand, and has little control over the right. She used to love to paint, but doesn’t do it much now. She still loves to read but can’t really hold a book, so Kelton reads aloud from murder mysteries and other favorites.

But Bonham’s mind is still sharp--active enough that when SEIU came calling a few years ago she urged her daughter to join.

“You can’t get a decent care provider for minimum wage,” Bonham said last week

“People shouldn’t think that [care providers] are just some lowly nobodies.”