Home health bargain a bad deal for state

Home health care workers were unionized with the passage of Initiative 775 in 2001 and are currently pushing for approval of their first collectively bargained contract. While a pay raise may be in order for many of them, there are drawbacks to the proposed agreement. Unfortunately, under the current initiative, legislators are only permitted to approve or disapprove the package—they cannot modify and improve it.

Due to the problems identified below with the current draft of the agreement, we recommend legislators refuse to ratify the contract and override I-775 (with a two-thirds vote) so they can appropriate a fair salary increase for home health care workers. This should be done without adding home health care workers to the current 100,000-plus state employees.

Problems identified with the current contract include:

Home health care workers may be considered state employees, even if they're family members of the patient. If this happens:

• The state may have to pay pension benefits, health benefits, overtime, travel expenses, and other state employee benefits to a family member acting as a home caregiver.

• The state may become the primary employer, not the client.

• Clients may lose their right to choose who provides care.

Up to 25,000 home health care workers may be added to the state's Basic Health Plan.

• The state's Health Services Account is already facing a $570 million deficit.

• Home care workers would not be subject to income verification or other eligibility requirements (a recipient could be married to a millionaire, still collect state benefits, and pay only $10 a month to participate).

• More than half of all home health care workers care for family members. When California approved a comparable agreement, many non-family workers were fired and replaced by family members who then signed up for state health benefits.

It would cost taxpayers an additional $97 million during this budget crisis.

• The agreement would increase pay for workers by 25 percent over the next two years.

• The agreement has a bow wave effect that will double costs to nearly $200 million in the 2005-07 budget cycle.

• Labor and Industries costs alone would be $40 million in the next budget cycle, and there is no system set up to ensure employees meet requirements for requesting and receiving benefits.

Prepared by Bob Williams, President and Senior Research Analyst (360) 956-3482

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org