Health Care Workers Rally At Sonoma Co. Supes Meeting For 'Living Wage'

File photo from July rally via seiu-uhw on Facebook.

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Several dozen in-home health care workers rallied this morning outside the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors meeting demanding they be included in the county’s proposed $15 per hour “living wage” ordinance.

The 5,500 health care workers make $11.65 per hour in their current union contract that expires on Sept. 30, and about 400 of them also receive 60 cents per hour in medical benefits, according to Benigno Delgado, deputy director of government relations with Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West.

The in-home health care workers were not included in the proposed living wage ordinance that was tentatively approved June 9 because their union is currently in negotiations with the county.

Some of the union’s employees work as janitors, service workers and technicians in hospitals in the county. Delgado said the county has offered a 10 cent an hour raise starting in 2016, and another dime an hour in 2017.

He said workers would also have the option of being paid $12.45 an hour without medical benefits for four years.

“Their offer is insulting and is a mockery of the bargaining process,” Delgado said.

The union has proposed $13 an hour now, $14 an hour on July 1, 2016, and $15 an hour on July 1, 2017, Delgado said. Delgado said the union’s proposal is an attempt “to create a path” to a $15 an hour living wage.

The Board of Supervisors was scheduled to formally approve the living wage ordinance this morning, but the item was withdrawn from the agenda. Board chair Susan Gorin, however, said the issue needs “broader outreach and clarification.”

She and Supervisor James Gore as an ad hoc committee will meet with representatives of nonprofit agencies whose employees are not included in the living wage ordinance. Gorin said the in-home health care workers will not be included in the further discussion of the living wage ordinance that will come back before the full board in late fall.

“We want to make sure the living wage ordinance we adopt meets the needs of everybody,” Gorin said. Health care workers at the rally this morning chanted, “We can’t survive on $11.65,” and “$15 an hour now.”

Speakers at the rally noted that unionized in-home health care workers in Marin County and San Francisco are included in $15 hourly living wage ordinances.

“It can happen and be done here legally,” said Martin Bennett, a living wage coalition organizer.

--Bay City News