Healthy Homecare Settlement

Higher State Contributions Protect Coverage

A member bargaining committee representing nearly 10,000 SEIU Local 503 homecare workers has reached a tentative agreement with the state on a new contract that protects historic gains in paid health coverage made in prior years and preserves pay rates and working conditions that have made Oregon a national leader in community homecare.

“I'm so excited that in a most difficult bargaining year we were able to negotiate an increase in the state's contribution to cover rising health care costs,” said Beverly Mackey, a Lincoln City homecare worker who chaired the SEIU 503 elected bargaining committee.

“We have protected services for our clients and won a fair contract for our members.”

The new two-year contract, effective July 1, 2009, capped an often tense eight months of bargaining and lobbying that started with a successful effort to reverse legislative budget proposals that threatened severe cuts to client care.

Members and allies converged on the Capitol in Salem to convince legislators to preserve Oregon’s 30-year role as a national pioneer in applying Medicaid funds to pay for home-based health care for seniors and people with disabilities. Their argument became all the more convincing after federal stimulus dollars increased the federal government’s share of Medicaid costs.

That fight won, SEIU 503 members turned their attention to bargaining that began Feb. 2 and focused largely on health coverage. For months, state negotiators refused to commit to covering premium increases for represented homecare workers who receive fully paid medical, dental and vision coverage if they work 80 hours a month.

Members contended that increases were likely to price many workers out of the program and eventually the state relented, agreeing to cover up to 11% of any premium increase in the first year and 10% in the second year. That amounts to an eventual increase of $1,826 a year in state contributions to homecare worker care.

Oregon homecare workers, the first in the nation to be granted the right to form a union by the state’s voters in a ballot referendum in 1999, negotiated their first contract in 2001. Hourly care providers earn $10.20 an hour, 24-hour live-in care providers, $4.55 an hour.

The new contract contained several other improvements important to many members, including one provision allowing round-the-clock workers to take paid leave in 12-hour blocks instead of a full day at a time.

Members will vote on the contract in the coming weeks at regional meetings or by mail.

“We have maintained health care and wages and taken no cuts despite the economy,’ said committee vice chair Virginia Griensewic, a homecare worker from Tangent in central Oregon. “We unanimously recommended a yes vote.”

In addition to Mackey and Griensewic, the committee included Elisha Burton of Cornelius, LJ Denney of Camas Valley, Patrick Featherstone of Salem, Kay Foster of Hermiston, Susan Gallagher of Dallas, BG Gray of Portland, Carolynn Kohout of Hillsboro, Lee Meyers of Central Point, Irina Nasteka of Portland, Anita Pecoff of Bend, Alice Redding of Rainier, Adam Riggs of Eugene, Bobbie Sotin of North Bend, Phyllis Wills of Hillsboro and Mary Wood of Lincoln City.

More recent news about SEIU care providers