Home Health Care Workers Ratify Contract, Receive Small Raises

Contra Costa County home care workers ratified a new labor contract that gives them a minor boost to wages without a proposed caveat that this increase come at the cost of health care benefit limits, according to the workers' union.

Represented in the contract negotiations by Service Employees International Union Local 2015, the union members voted overwhelmingly in favor of ratifying an agreement reached with the county on Feb. 12 that gives these workers their first wage increase in more than seven years.

The increase amounts to less than a dollar per hour for the county's home care workers, who will move from their current $11.50 hourly pay rate to $12 and then $12.25 by January 2017.

But it does not include a stipulated limit on the number of home care workers that have access to health care benefits, as the union members vocalized concern about to the county's Board of Supervisors during an October meeting.

This was one of the many times the union's members appeared at meetings to ask the supervisors for a fair labor contract.

"We won our contract because we got organized and got members involved," home care worker John Roe, who was part of the bargaining team, said in a statement. "Now we're going to organize for $15."

The agreed-upon increase is expected to cost $2.4 million from the county's general fund in fiscal year 2017-18, according to supervisor meeting agenda documents.

Supervisors are slated to give final approval to the new labor contract on Tuesday, ending bargaining that originally began in March 2014.

"This contract impacts those who care for our county's most vulnerable population and should have been resolved sooner, but we are certainly glad that it is finally done," Arnulfo De La Cruz, a provisional officer with the union, said in a statement.

By Bay City News