Historically, low pay and poor working conditions have contributed to the rate of worker turnover, which is as high as 40% per year for IHSS workers. This generates difficulties for consumers who must locate and train every new worker.
- In the past, nearly all IHSS IP workers in California received the minimum wage, which is the lowest legal wage that can be paid in the country.
- Workers had no paid sick leave, vacation, holidays, or health care coverage.
- A SEIU Health Care Workers' Local 250 (now SEIU-UHW)survey in 1998 found that half of San Francisco's independent providers had no health insurance at all.
- Most IHSS jobs are less than 20 hours a week, requiring many providers to work for two or three people to piece together a full-time job. However, workers are not paid for travel time and many need to work unusual hours in order to meet consumers' needs.
Luckily for both workers and the consumers they serve, wages and benefits for workers have continuously improved over the years, decreasing worker turnover rate and therefore improving the services provided to IHSS consumers. |
| In San Francisco, the Public Authority and others have fought hard to improve workers' wages and benefits. As a result of advocacy efforts by the IHSS Task Force, SEIU-UHW, Consumers in Action for Personal Assistance (CIAPA) and the Public Authority, IHSS Independent Providers (IPs) received a significant wage increase of 58 cents above minimum wage on January 1, 1996. These same parties continued to work together to ensure that those increases to the wage would remain. However, as the federal and state governments increased the minimum wage, the County in turn chose to offset its required share in those increases by reducing the differential. Consequently, by March 1997 the wage was only 29 cents above the minimum wage - a long way from meeting conditions for a living wage. At the beginning of 1997, the Public Authority and other parties dedicated themselves to the "Living Wage Campaign," initiated by Local 250. The campaign asked Mayor Willie Brown to budget $8.00 per hour plus benefits for IPs. PECC and the IHSS Task Force began a postcard campaign and 2,000 postcards were sent to the Mayor in support of a living wage. CIAPA organized a Living Wage rally in May, and the Senior Action Network included the Living Wage as an issue in their June rally. In late June 1997, the Finance Committee of the Board of Supervisors recommended to almost completely reinstate their financial commitment of January 1997 and allocated $1.1 million to increase IP wages to 54 cents above minimum wage. The Mayor accepted that request and directed the Department of Public Health to work on a health coverage plan to be offered to individual providers throughout the County. In March 1998, another minimum wage increase raised the IHSS Independent Provider (IP) wage to $6.29. In 1998, the Public Authority, along with Local 250, and PECC again fought for a living wage. Another Living Wage Rally was organized in May, the theme of which, "It's the Tip of the Iceberg," coincided with the success of the movie Titanic. In July everyone's hard work paid off when the Board of Supervisors approved an IP wage of $7.00 per hour, to be effective August 1, 1998, and agreed to fund the medical plan for IPs, which started in March 1999. In late 1999, the County agreed to fund a dental plan, which started in January 2000. The IP wage was increased to $9.00 in October 1999, to $9.70 in July 2000, to $10.00 in fall 2001, to $10.10 in the fall of 2002, to $10.28 in December 2003, to $10.65 in 2006, to $10.95 and then $11.50 in 2007, and most recently, to $11.54 in 2008. |
Advocacy 