Santa versus supervisors

Santa, Mrs. Claus and about a half-dozen elves paid an unexpected visit to the Butte County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday (Dec. 9), not to spread good cheer, but rather to demand county officials immediately open labor negotiations with home health care workers.

The costumed men and women, who stood and held up signs as the supervisors called for a five-minute recess at about 9:40 a.m., were not-so-jolly In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) workers and the union that represents them, California United Health Care Workers.

IHSS is a state program that pays caregivers to help keep low-income elderly, blind and disabled individuals who would otherwise need full-time care living at home. Butte county IHSS workers are currently paid minimum wage.

The union has charged the county will not meet with them to negotiate a new contract, while the county contends the 2012 implementation of the Coordinated Care Initiative transferred collective bargaining duties to the state (see “Caregivers’ conundrum,” Newslines, Nov. 20).

However, the Coordinated Care Initiative initially only affected eight California counties, did not include Butte and has never expanded to include more. The union filed a fair labor practice complaint with the state Public Employment Relations Board in October. The board replied Dec. 2, informing all parties that the county must respond to the complaint within 20 days and meet union reps at an informal conference in Sacramento on Jan. 6.

“The compliant is like an indictment, in that [the county] can wait and they can stall and they can insist on a formal hearing, but why do they want to do that?” said Lois Kugelmass, a union negotiator who helped organize the demonstration.

Kugelmass said the union chose to stage Tuesday’s action because the board would be discussing how to proceed in dealing with the union and with the Public Employment Relations Board complaint in closed session that day. Public comment on items not listed on the meeting’s agenda is limited to the end of the public meeting, after most observers have left, and Kugelmass said the home health care workers would not have been heard at all unless they took such drastic measures.

“It’s up to them if they want to play naughty or nice,” Kuglemass continued, keeping with the theme of the theatrical protest. “They have a choice of whether they want to continue on their course and keep wasting time and money on lawyers and legal fees, or meet us and bargain in good faith.”

Connie Graham, who dressed as Mrs. Claus for the demonstration, is the union’s statewide second vice president and has been a home health care worker for the past 13 years. She explained that, though many people use the IHSS program to take care of their own family members, she and some other workers are assigned to other consumers.

“We are doing some of the same work as nurses and nurses’ assistants,” Graham said. “We go in every day and change diapers, give people meds, do wound care and perform lots of other duties. For them to treat us like ‘glorified babysitters,’ as we’ve heard some people in this county refer to us, is very hard.”

Graham explained the hours allocated for consumers’ care are generally insufficient and constantly being cut, with an 8 percent across-the-board decrease last year. This means IHSS workers perform the same amount of duties in fewer hours, and Graham said some caregivers continue to work, unpaid, to provide adequate care.

“We don’t get time off, or overtime, or paid holidays, and we’re paid poverty wages,” she said. “It’s time for [the county] to renegotiate.”

According to Supervisor Steve Lambert, the county is finally ready to—as Kugelmass put it—“play nice.”

In a phone interview after Tuesday’s closed session, Lambert said the supervisors now realize the state has not and will not assume control of bargaining with the union, and said the county will open up negotiations after the beginning of the new year.

“In all honesty, this was never a matter of trying to be dismissive, we just wanted to do the fiscally responsible thing and make sure it was our responsibility,” he said. “Now it doesn’t look like the state will get involved, so we’re ready to work on some positive movement.”

Lambert characterized IHSS workers as “hard-working people with an important job,” but said he disapproves of some of the union’s tactics. “It’s the nature of these kinds of things, there’s always a lot of posturing involved.”

The Santa stunt, though, at least made Lambert laugh: “As supervisors, we never know what we’re going to see when we walk in that room,” he said. “But the Christmas thing, OK, at least it was kind of cheery, and it’s better than them showing up carrying pitchforks.”