SEIU celebrates $16 home care worker minimum wage, readies to lobby for $20

Home care workers in 2021 petitioned for the creation of a labor board focused on their industry. (Photo: April Corbin Girnus/Nevada Current)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

SEIU Local 1107 on Thursday unveiled its new legislative priorities for home care workers. Most prominent among them: setting their minimum hourly wage at $20.

The union in recent years has pushed to increase pay rates for the workforce whose average wage had hovered around $11 for nearly a decade. Last year, Nevada state lawmakers passed a bill establishing a $16 an hour minimum wage for home care workers.

“Sixteen is great,” said Clark County Commissioner William McCurdy, a former SEIU organizer who spoke at the event Thursday. “It shows the power of collective mobilization. But I think that we are going to do a little bit better next legislative session.”

An increase to $20 per hour for home care workers would be possible by adjusting the Medicaid reimbursement rate for the employers who provide home care services to $30 per hour.

Before last year, the state’s home care reimbursement rate had remained stationary for two decades. But even with the recent bump, Nevada’s per capita spending on home and community-based services remains among the lowest in the nation — 43rd, according to Medicaid data.

DK Loving, who has been a home care worker for 19 years, said she went from making $11.30 per hour to making $16 per hour overnight, a jump that immediately made life a little less stressful.

She now has a little more leeway when buying groceries, she added.

Loving said she was drawn to the profession after being the unpaid caretaker for two elder members of her family before they died. Home care workers are often what allows seniors and people with disabilities to remain in their home, living as independently as possible. Home care worker duties can include things like bathing and feeding the client, as well as things like taking them to doctors appointments or grocery shopping.

It’s important work that ultimately saves public dollars by keeping people out of Medicaid-funded nursing homes, but the industry is plagued with low wages and a lack of benefits like paid time off for workers.

State Sen. Dina Neal (D-North Las Vegas) spoke at the event of one home care worker who was until recently housing insecure.

“You shouldn’t have to sit on the sidelines and wish you could have a porch that belongs to you,” she said, speaking directly to the room of home care workers. “You shouldn’t have to wish that you could have a backyard for your kids to sit in. That shouldn’t be the dream deferred for your life.”

Neal continued, “I see so much pain. ‘I’m working all day and I don’t got nothing for myself. I’m working all day and ain’t nobody calling me and asking me how I’m doing. I’m serving this family and ain’t nobody asking me what I gotta do to make sure I can eat.’”

Other policy priorities for SEIU include finding ways to increase the number of client service hours for those who need it, improving training quality and opportunities for home care workers, and addressing employee misclassification issues. Several home care workers said existing training does not properly prepare new workers. Often, training is conducted virtually rather than in-person and hands-on.

Popular support

Nevada has an estimated 13,000 home care workers. They are predominantly women (85%) and people of color (59%). Half of all home care workers leave the industry within the first year, according to a report from the Guinn Center.

McCurdy highlighted results from a union-commissioned poll of 1,000 likely Nevada voters that found 8 out of 10 are concerned about the shortage of home care workers. The Silver State has one of the fastest aging populations in the country, according to data from the U.S. Census.

The poll also found 85% of Nevadans support raising the minimum wage for home care workers and 88% support those workers having medical insurance and paid sick days. Support crossed political ideologies.

Richard Whitley, director of the state Department of Health and Human Services, who was honored by SEIU at the event, said one thing that stuck with him after meeting with home care workers was how many of them qualified for income-based safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid.

DHHS built the $16 home care minimum wage and related Medicaid reimbursement rate increase into its budget request before the last legislative session. That budget line went unaltered by the Legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Joe Lombardo.

Along with Whitley, SEIU leaders recognized Neal and fellow Democratic state Sen. Rochelle Nguyen for championing their cause. Nguyen led the effort last year to set the hourly minimum wage for home care workers at $16. Neal sponsored a 2021 bill that led to the creation of a Home Care Employment Standards Board, which made a series of legislative recommendations, including setting the minimum wage.

Neal’s bill did not directly establish the standards board. It only authorized for the board to be created if 50 home care workers formally petitioned the Nevada Department of Health and Human Service, which they did in October 2021. Once created, the board had one year to meet and submit policy recommendations to lawmakers.

Home care workers could reconstitute the board by submitting another petition to DHHS, but Neal hopes the Legislature can instead make the board permanent.

Leslie Frane, executive vice president of SEIU, described the Home Care Employment Standards Board as “fundamentally revolutionary” because it improved working conditions for all of the industry’s 13,000 workers, not just the 1,000 who have formally unionized. Home care workers in Nevada are divided across approximately 300 different agencies — many of them incredibly small — which makes organizing employer by employer challenging, she added.

Frane said efforts to improve conditions for home care workers are happening all over the country. In Washington , for example, home care workers can receive paid time off and health care benefits for themselves and their dependents. Elsewhere, SEIU has helped secure higher minimum wages and wage scales that allow more experienced senior workers to be paid more, incentivizing people to stay in the industry.

Nguyen called the home care minimum wage bill “one of the most impactful bills” she’s worked on during her time in the Legislature. Nguyen said she grew up in a multigenerational home where home care workers assisted with her grandfather, and now her 78-year-old father and 77-year-old father-in-law both live in her home.

“I know there’ll be a day when I need you,” she told the room full of home care workers.

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