Organizing Home Care: Low-Waged Workers in the Welfare State

Abstract

Unionization of home care has depended on the state location of the occupation. Government social policies and funding created home care, shaping the structure of the industry and the conditions of work. The welfare nexus, linking old age, disability, health, and welfare policies, however, also transformed care hidden in the home into a public service. Through case studies of California and Oregon, leaders in deinstitutionalizing care of the elderly and disabled, we explore the social struggles that forced the state to recognize its invisible workforce. The home location of personal attendants and other health aides has entailed not only organizing challenges but policy innovation as well. Using the welfare state location of the labor, workers allied with consumers to develop the public authority as a newstructure of representation. The history of home care shows that social welfare and health policy have long been entangled with labor policy.

Caught Between Love and Money: The Experiences of Paid Family Caregivers

“…Although considerable attention has been given to non-family home care aides in California (Boris and Klein 2006;Delp and Quan 2002;Howes 2004;Howes 2008;Stacey 2005Stacey , 2011, very little scholarly work mentions, let alone examines, the sub-set of family caregivers who comprise roughly 40% of the total IHSS workforce (Berg and Farrar 2000). Beyond the uniqueness of the population, we suggest that an examination of family providers also contributes to ongoing discussions in sociology about familial and gendered obligations to care, the hostile worlds of love and money, and the way that caregivers interpret and account for their labor, especially when that labor is carried out in non-normative ways.…”

“…Forty percent of homecare workers employed by the agency are family providers (Berg and Farrar 2000). The vast majority of IHSS workers in California are organized, represented by a handful of service unions including Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Domestic Workers (UDW) and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) (Boris and Klein 2006;Delp and Quan 2002). The unions represent both family and non-family providers throughout the state.…”

El sindicalismo como vía de ciudadanía laboral. El caso de las cuidadoras y cuidadores migrantes en Israel

“…Dos ejemplos prometedores de grandes sindicatos que han invertido esfuerzos en sindicar a trabajadores migrantes del cuidado, a pesar de los costos inmediatos que ello representaba, son el británico Unison, que está defendiendo la participación activa de los trabajadores migrantes en su estructura 12 , y la campaña de sindicación de Service Employees International Union (SEIU, Sindicato Internacional de Trabajadores de Servicios) en California (Estados Unidos). La estrategia de este último se basó en una colaboración amplia con asociaciones de personas de edad y personas con discapacidades, con lo que evitaron el sentimiento de que sus acciones fueran en contra de los intereses de estos grupos (Boris y Klein, 2006).…”

“…Por consiguiente, el principal destinatario de las protestas de los sindicatos ha de ser el Estado. Una posible alternativa sería pues presionar al Estado para que asumiera la responsabilidad de «empleador» a los efectos de la negociación con los sindicatos, como ya se ha hecho en otros lugares (Boris y Klein, 2006;Rhee y Zabin, 2009). Sin embargo, en Israel el Estado ha concebido esta compleja estructura jurídica precisamente para evitar dicha responsabilidad, distanciándose de la cuestión de la contratación de los cuidadores y diversificando los actores implicados en ella, de forma que no pueda existir un responsable único.…”

Individual Needs Versus Collective Interests: Network Dynamics in the Freelance Editorial Association

“…The alliances created in this decentralized workforce bear some resemblance to the conditions for organizing home health care workers, among whom recent campaigns have led to unionization in a few states (Boris and Klein 2006;Delp and Quan 2002;Gerrick 2003). Home care workers, too, have little day-to-day contact with each other and instead interact regularly with those who use their services.…”