Home health care workers
'The new face of labor'
Following are excerpts from a talk given by health-care
worker Toni Arenstein at a June 11 Workers World Party meeting
in New York City.
This past week has been one of tremendous
labor struggles of our class in New York City. The main issue
has been the need for a living wage. They have involved the
home health aides. These workers are some of the most
oppressed, low-paid workers in the city and they are mostly
women of color and many immigrants.
These workers are making $6 to $7 an hour, often after
working 10-12 years. Medicaid and Medicare pay $18 per hour for
home health aide services, and the big executives in the
agencies earn triple-digit salaries.
I heard one of the home health aides interviewed. She said
she has multiple sclerosis herself and yet she takes care of
other people. She has been working 10 years and makes$7 an
hour--and has no health benefits or sick time. And she makes
too much money to be eligible for Medicaid.
So here these workers are caring for the sick and elderly
and they have no medical benefits. What an outrage.
I was a visiting nurse in New York City for 10 years and I
can say without a doubt that it is the home health aides who
keep the patients alive. They cook, feed, bathe, clothe, do the
shopping, purchase the prescriptions, remind to take
medications, change diapers, use complicated equipment, help
people to be able to walk again, or push the wheelchairs so
they can get out of the house.
This is truly life-sustaining. Without the work they do,
people would be placed in nursing homes or die.
Many of the home health aides are not able to afford housing
because it is impossible to find an apartment when earning
$12,000-$14,000 per year. Some are forced to live in shelters.
They also travel long distances and often have to go from home
to home to provide care for different patients.
The strike ended June 9 with 1199 Service Employees reaching
settlements with five home-care agencies employing 12,000 home
health aides. Union leaders said little progress had been made
in negotiations with seven other agencies employing about
10,000 workers.
What is really significant about the home health aides is
that this struggle is really the result of new organizing in
the last 10 years. When I was a visiting nurse in the 1980s and
early 1990s, 1199 was attempting to organize home health aides
but it was very difficult. Very few were organized at that
time. Part of the problem was that home health aides didn't
work in one place, so it was very difficult to get to them to
sign cards or to invite them to meetings.
When the 74,000 home health aides were finally organized by
the Service Employees in Los Angeles in 1999, it was reported
that the union organizers had to overcome many practical and
political obstacles to achieve this victory. They had to stand
at many bus stops all over Los Angeles so they could reach the
workers.
To know this history and to see them out so strong and
defiant was really an inspiration and so encouraging about the
struggles to come.
The party is very excited about these developments because
these are the workers of the struggles to come. They are like
the grocery workers in the California strike. They will usher
in a whole new era of struggle.
It's interesting that the strikes by the home health aides
and the day-care workers came at the same time. It's ines ca
pable: They are the new face of the working class in New York
City.
They are largely women, oppressed, many are immigrants.
There is a rising level of anger among low-paid workers.
They are saying, "We won't take it anymore." It signifies
that this growing sector of the working class is saying, "We
are angry and if you don't deal with us we are not going to go
away."
In his landmark 1986 book "High Tech, Low Pay," Workers
World Party founder Sam Marcy wrote that as capitalism ravages
the living standards of an increasingly multinational working
class, "it lays the objective basis for the politicization of
the workers, for moving in a more leftward direction and for
organization on a broad scale."
Pointing to a recent New York hospital workers' strike, he
wrote, "That the hospital strikers are more politically
conscious and a more militant element of the working class can
easily be verified by even a chance acquaintance with
them."
These are very important struggles of our class and we look
forward to more of these struggles and the possibility for the
party to intervene. We must make every attempt possible to
demonstrate solidarity and support and to make sure that every
worker who wants one goes home with a Workers World
newspaper.
Onward to Workers World Party's continued participation and
intervention in the workers' struggle.
Reprinted from the June 24, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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