Thousands of Home Aides Strike, Seeking $3 Hourly Raise

[Snellius]

Thousands of home health care aides went on strike yesterday in New York City, leaving many sick and elderly patients without care for at least part of the day.

Home care agencies scrambled to send nurses or other aides to care for the patients as the city's largest health care union, 1199/S.E.I.U., called a three-day strike. The union is seeking raises of 43 percent, hoping to increase the wages of 23,000 aides to $10 an hour from the current $7.

Union leaders asserted that the strike was highly effective, saying that 12,000 home care aides - nearly all of whom are black and Hispanic women - demonstrated yesterday at a Midtown rally in which Senator Charles E. Schumer and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate, took part.

But the home care agencies said that the walkout did little damage, and that more than half of the 23,000 workers crossed the picket line to care for patients.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/nyregion/08strike.html?hp

[struggle4progress]

1. Health care workers deserve a living wage.

[gratuitous]

2. Reagan rises from the grave to fire them

Thousands of home-bound invalids expire. Reagan toasted for "breaking the back" of another greedy union. Imagine wanting $10 an hour to care for the sick and the elderly. Don't they know that big insurance CEOs can't afford their yachts if people start making something a little more like a living wage?

[RoyGBiv]

3. $7 an hour!?

In New York City!?!?!?!?!?

Hell, we paid the lady that took care of my grandma during the day $15/hr, and all she did was dispense medication, make meals, and keep her company. And this was in the early 90's in a small town in Oklahoma.

I bet the people that run the agencies make a week bit more than that. Hell, I bet the administrator's secretaries make more than that.

[SOS]

4. Great News

Will email Schumer and Dean to thank them.

These "home care agencies" bill the City of NY $17-$20 an hour.
Then they turn around and pay $7.
Buncha crooks.

[schultzee]

5. Go for it! the F ing middle people take all their money. They deserve

a living wage, something rePIGs don't want anyone but themselves to have.

[Laughing Mirror]

6. A scandal

Those home health care workers ought to be getting at least double of what they are getting, free health care included, nothing less.