Oregon home-care workers OK ‘historic’ contract

More than 98 percent of Oregon home-care workers have voted to ratify their new union contract with the state. And for the first time, the contract covers about 7,500 caregivers who work with people with mental health issues and developmental disabilities.

Rebecca Sandoval, a caregiver who was the bargaining unit chair for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503 on the bargaining team, says the workers agreed to a pay freeze. In exchange, the state kept their health-insurance program unchanged.

The state had proposed doubling the number of hours that caregivers have to work to qualify for state-paid health insurance — and also wanted workers to share their premium costs, she says.

“We were afraid that since home-care workers make so little money — we make $10.20 an hour — that if there were a premium share, people would just drop the insurance because they couldn’t afford it,” Sandoval says.

They had been bargaining since February 2011. Sandoval says state-paid health insurance is the benefit that often keeps people in a field that is seriously understaffed.

Sandoval says a home-care job is rarely a standard work week, and the nature of the work means caregivers can’t just find more clients when they need more income.

In January, Oregon cut home-care clients’ hours of service by 10 percent, which also has meant fewer work hours for caregivers.

“The clients and the home-care workers — our needs and our concerns are the same, they’re the exact same,” Sandoval says. “In fact, when their hours got cut, it’s probably safe to say that there are home-care workers who basically are working for less an hour, because those needs don’t change. We always fight for our clients.”

The new contract covers a total of more than 18,000 home-care workers, all members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503.

Sandoval says the union considers the new contract historic, because Oregon is the first state where workers have united from multiple fields that all allow people to live independently. They will start bargaining for the next contract in about six months.

Chris Thomas of Oregon News Service prepared this report.