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Massachusetts Home Care Workers Get Raise
January 27, 2006
As of last November, homemakers and personal care homemakers working for state-funded home care providers in Massachusetts got an additional 75 cents in compensation (including base wages, health/life insurance, travel stipends, and training wages), raising average hourly wages from $9.79 to $10.54. The increase came from a bump in reimbursement to providers of 85 cents an hour that was enacted in the FY2006 state budget, which allocated $3.9 million to the initiative. The increase is retroactive to July 1, 2005.
According to Lisa Gurgone, executive director of the Massachusetts Council for Home Care Aide Services, which helped create awareness of the need for the increase, one of the bill's sponsors emphasized at a press conference on the budget that the goal of the bill was to raise the average compensation earned by these essential workers above $10 an hour. ''It was a huge victory,'' says Gurgone. ''When we initially decided to ask for some funding, we were under the impression that we would get half of what we asked for, if anything, and that it would take years. But the legislature really responded to our argument and said, 'You're right; these workers should be getting more.''
''We just tried to explain that most home care aides are not working 40 hours a week - they're lucky if they get 20 hours of paid work. If you look at their earnings, it's $19,000 a year or less, and in Massachusetts that's nothing. And we talked about the agencies that are in a really dire situation with recruitment and retention. It's surprising, but we're really happy that they supported us like that.''
Elise Nakhnikian, Communications Specialist
Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute
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