Dive Brief:
- As of July 2018, almost 35,000 personal care attendants in Massachusetts will receive a minimim of $15 an hour in pay.
- The pay increase from $13.38 an hour to $15 an hour was a reault of lengthy negotiations between the Baker administration and Service Employees International Union Local 1199.
- This is the first state-level victory for low-wage workers nationwide who are pushing for a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
Dive Insight:
"[The agreement] makes Massachusetts the first state to guarantee a living wage for home care workers, a fast-growing, crucial part of our healthcare system where workers have been underpaid for far too long,” said Paul Sonn, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project, a New York workers' rights group.
Home health workers have recently joined the national "Fight for $15" movement, holding demonstrations and writing letters in a battle over the right to unionize and in an effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour nationally. However, many organizations have said that the $15 an hour minimum could necessitate hiring freezes and make it impossible for them to turn a profit, particularly as costs continue to rise.
In less than three years, $15 an hour minimum wage laws have been passed in a number of states, including city-wide laws in Seattle, San Francisco, Chigago and Los Angeles. Home health agencies need to start thinking about how that type of pay increase would affect them and how they will deal with the fallout.