Even as some of the state’s largest health systems move to a minimum wage of $15/hour, the state is raising the minimum for home health care workers where the turnover rate is an appalling 60 percent to only $12.38. What do lawmakers not get about workforce dynamics?
The Raise the Wage Act and the federal Domestic Workers Bill of Rights are platforms for the Democratic Party without any path to becoming law. But they do go a long way in defining the meaning of a “good job” in 21st-century America.
This week, New Jersey became the fourth state to raise its minimum wage to $15. The bill isn’t perfect, but it’s a big step in wage justice for hourly workers and its success is the result of smart campaigning by advocacy groups.
In 2019, 20 states and 21 cities will be raising their minimum wages, directly bumping up the wages of 5.3 million workers and indirectly benefiting more.
Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced into Congress the “Stop Walmart” Act. Just one month earlier, the Senator’s “Stop Bezos” bill pushed Amazon to raise its wage floor to $15 an hour.
In San Francisco, where the cost of living is out of sight, there is an immediate need to address nonprofit and home health care worker salary levels—as the board of supervisors and mayor have just done. But, in the end, the city may prove too expensive to host the nonprofits it needs.
The San Francisco board of supervisors sees an eldercare crisis headed right at the city and they are not alone.
Under a new policy approved unanimously this week by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as many as 40,000 workers at New York City airports will earn a $19 hourly wage by 2023.
The board met monthly over lunch, but so much power was vested in the CEO and a strong executive committee that the board believed that the CEO was one of the “best in the country” even as most indicators showed declining impact.
A strike by direct care workers was narrowly averted as the Connecticut passed legislation to increase pay rates for caregivers, many of which work for nonprofits that themselves supported the strike.
