2007 Legislative Report

Legislature Funds Raises & Benefits For Home Care Workers, Improves Training, But Fails To Fully Fund Nursing Homes

Here’s how the State Legislature did on SEIU 775’s top priorities:

Wages & Benefits For Home Care Workers: SEIU 775 won $150 million in improved wages and benefits for home care workers. The funding implements the individual provider union contract and provides a “parity” increase to workers at private agencies. Read the IP contract here (pdf).

Training for Long-Term Care Workers: SEIU 775 won legislation improving training for home care and other community-based long-term care workers. The legislation, which goes into effect in 2010, will provide peer mentoring to all new caregivers, offer 65 hours a year of advanced specialty training, and establish a workgroup to develop a new training standard and curriculum for caregivers.

Nursing Home Funding:  Thanks to leadership from legislators like SEIU 775 won $30 million in new state funding for nursing homes, and won legislation requiring the state to re-set nursing home funding every two years to keep up with the rising cost of care. But last minute changes by some legislators will cause some nursing homes to lose as much as $400,000 in funding, and the legislature did nothing to improve wages and benefits for nursing home workers.

Tax Fairness: The good news is that the legislature blocked efforts to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies for professional sports like the Sonics and NASCAR. However, the legislature failed to improve accountability for corporate tax loopholes and added several new loopholes costing tens of millions of dollars to the state budget.

Predatory Lending: Democratic legislators like State Rep. Steve Kirby and State Senator Margarita Prentice prevented any action to stop predatory lenders who charge as much as 400% interest.