Article by Erik Smith. Published on Monday, May 09, 2011 EST.
Workers Must Take Test That’s Not Offered, and Attend Classes That Many Can’t Get
By Erik Smith
Staff writer/ Washington State Wire
OLYMPIA, May 9.—By the end of the month, thousands of newly hired home-care workers in Washington are supposed to start passing a state certification test. Without that certication, they can’t keep working.
Here’s how many of them have taken that test so far.
Zero. Zippo. Nada.
That’s because the state doesn’t offer it.
It is the kind of story Franz Kafka might enjoy. Starting this month stringent new rules advocated by the Service Employees International Union kick in for every home care worker in the state. But there is no way for the workers to comply. Workers are supposed to take a test the state doesn’t offer and attend a class many of them can’t get. If they don’t, they are supposed to be fired. The whole thing became clear less than a month ago, just before the deadline for the first batch of new hires, and for many it is already too late.
The whole story might sound crazy, except that some workers apparently already are getting termination notices from the Department of Social and Health Services.
The situation comes about because of something no one expected – a come-from-behind victory for SEIU, the state’s most politically active labor union, a major backer of campaigns and the biggest-spending lobbying interest at the Capitol this year. At a time when education and social service programs are being cut and the state faces its worst budget situation since the Great Depression, the union pulled off an astounding feat. It convinced Democratic budget-writers in the House and Senate to launch a brand-new classroom-training program and certification program that will cost the state millions.
Three years ago the union sold voters on an initiative launching the program. The problem was that I-1029 didn’t provide a dime to pay for it. Lawmakers put it on hold because the state was broke. It still is. That’s why most folks seemed to think the same thing was going to happen again this time, just like the costly class-size and teacher salary initiatives the Legislature has been suspending for the last 11 years. Last December, Gov. Christine Gregoire proposed a two-year delay for I-1029 – “there’s no money,” she explained.
But leaders in the House and Senate thought otherwise, and last month they released budget proposals that contain $5 million in state money for the union program. That will leverage another $5 million in federal money. It is a fraction of the $50 million or so that the full program will cost every two years. What is more important is that they are signaling the program won’t be put off again. And SEIU’s big win means big trouble in other quarters.
A Great Big Mess
“This is a train wreck for our people,” said Leslie Emerick, lobbyist for the Washington Private Duty Association. “Our workers can’t get training, and if they don’t take the classes, we’re supposed to fire them. We can’t tell our people to break the law.”
Thousands of home care workers are caught in the bind.
State home care workers aren’t the problem. There are about 40,000 of them on the state payroll, all of them represented by SEIU. In 2008 the union argued 1029 would professionalize the workforce and create a “career ladder” for workers interested in advancement. For complicated political reasons, lawmakers did not extend the suspension last year and allowed the rules to take effect Jan. 1. That essentially forced DSHS to redirect $1.1 million a month toward a state-funded training program that is staffed by union workers. SEIU reports that about 5,000 workers have gotten training since the beginning of the year.
Because lawmakers didn’t take the governor’s advice and suspend the requirements this year, workers hired after Jan. 1 had 120 days to complete their training. Those who didn’t finish on time started getting termination notices last week, said Lorrie Mahar, who oversees the program for DSHS. A number was not immediately available. But that‘s not the big trouble.
That lies in the private sector, where thousands more are subject to the same rules. No one knows exactly how many private home care workers there are, but trade associations estimate there are at least 10,000 who work for private agencies and another 12,000 in adult family homes. After them come those who work in boarding homes and those who work directly for patients for cash. The state doesn’t pay for their classes – those workers are on their own. And few, if any, have taken them.
Nobody thought the Legislature would launch a costly new program in a year like this one, said David Lawrence, president of Family Resource Home Care in Seattle and president of the Washington Private Duty Association. “This came as a shock,” he said. “It was out of the blue.”
Three Community College Classes for Entire State
It’s not that private agencies are against training, Lawrence said. Most agencies offer their own. But the standardized I-1029 program isn’t cheap – perhaps $1,400 if you include tuition, training wages, testing and certification. Workers can’t afford it and employers haven’t been eager to pay. So there hasn’t been a rush to create the classes, nor has there been a rush of students to attend them.
Which is why the private agencies are in a state of alarm right now. For workers hired during the first 10 days of January, the deadline has already gone by. Private employers must decide whether to fire them or flout the law.
As for the rest, it is a matter of finding a class. Only three of the state’s 34 community colleges offer one. The cheapest, at Clark College in Vancouver, charges $550. The union says it is willing to provide classes to non-union workers at a cost of $15 an hour – double the Clark College rate – but Lawrence says that when potential students call they are told they have to join the union first. “The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing,” he said. The association has been calling other providers on the DSHS list of certified trainers and has found many haven’t started offering classes yet, he said.
SEIU says the private agencies are to blame for the mess. Whatever confusion there might have been about the Legislature’s position, the union says the rules were already on the books. Private-sector employers should have seen it coming and they should have devised classes for workers at their own expense, said union spokesman Adam Glickman. “If there’s a story here, it’s about the utter irresponsibility of these for-profit agencies for putting their workers and clients at risk because of their willful disregard of the law,” he said.
Louise Ryan, the state’s long-term care ombudsman, says the private agencies are putting profits ahead of care. “It seems that rather than looking at how to make the training a positive for their workforce, they are instead continuing to fight the professionalizing of our important caregiver workforce,” she said.
The union also argues that one training course is available online. Private workers could have taken that one, it says.
No Test Available
The training classes are one thing. The test is another. After 150 days, all home care workers who take the classes are supposed to take a state exam administered by the Department of Health. But because no one knew whether the Legislature was going to put the program on hold again, the department never got one ready. Health department spokesman Don Moyer said the agency is waiting for final word from the Legislature this year before going forward, but in the meantime it does not expect to enforce a rule that no one can comply with.
Certainly the situation will be brought to some sort of a resolution in a few weeks, once budget and policy bills are signed by the governor. State Rep. Eileen Cody, D-Seattle, chairwoman of the House Health Care Committee, is sponsoring the bill that limits the state’s initial spending to $5 million. Under House Bill 1548, the rules would be delayed until July 1 for public and private workers who are employed by agencies and who do not care for their own relatives. That would give workers until fall to finish their classes, and it ought to be enough time to get training programs up to speed, Cody said. Requirements for other workers won’t kick in until Jan. 1, 2014.
“The reason that [the private agencies] are pitching a fit is they want it delayed like the adult family homes and boarding homes,” Cody said. “And we are not going to do that because, as I pointed out to them, that people who are in the home who don’t have any supervision should go ahead and have the same training.”
Many Will be Fired
In the meantime, though, until the fix goes in the rules apply to every home care worker in the state. It doesn’t matter who employs them. Administrative rules adopted by DSHS say noncompliant private workers have to be fired just like the public workers, once that 120-day deadline passes. And the effect is permanent. Once workers are fired they can’t be rehired.
Until Cody’s bill is signed into law, Cindi Laws, executive director of the Washington State Residential Care Council, says adult family homes are required to start firing workers, too. Depending on how long the situation continues, hundreds if not thousands could lose their jobs, she said. Meanwhile, she said, the training is no better than what agencies and residential homes already give their workers, and the state will be siphoning millions of dollars from social service programs to pay salaries to union trainers.
Laws said it’s lawmakers’ fault:
“Too many of them are on their knees in front of SEIU.”Your support matters.
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