Marin's In-Home Support Service Workers Getting a Raise

By Bay City News Service:

Marin County’s Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a 30-cent-an-hour living wage increase for 1,680 employees, nearly all of them in-home support services employees who care for the disabled.

Approximately 1,600 IHSS employees who do not receive benefits will receive a 2.5 percent raise to $13.30 an hour in January. IHSS employees who receive benefits will receive $11.70 an hour.

Eighty county employees, including library aides, library technology aids, service workers and performance attendants, will also receive the same wage increases.

The Board of Supervisors also approved a living wage increase last year, Marin County spokesman Brent Ainsworth said.

The pay hikes will cost the county $206,000 for the rest of the current fiscal year and $412,000 in subsequent years, Ainsworth said.

Marin County’s wages for in-home support service workers is the best among comparable counties in the state, but Santa Clara County is expected to increase its $13 rate for those employees in February 2016, Ainsworth said.

Marin County, traditionally among the counties with the highest median income in the state, adopted a living wage ordinance in 2002. The County Administrator’s Office reviews impacts of the living wage on county government departments each year. No significant or unexpected cost increases or reductions in the level of service were reported in the past year, management and budget analyst Jacalyn Mah said in a report to the Board of Supervisors.

Automatic cost of living wage increases are based on the October-to-October increase in the Bay Area Consumer Price Index.

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