(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blogsite)
A 2008 state law, which substantially raised funding to corporate agencies running group homes for people with disabilities, has resulted in only minimal increases in wages for direct-care workers in those facilities, according to a new report from the SEIU Local 509, a Massachusetts state employee union.
Since the law known as Chapter 257 took effect, the average hourly wage for direct-care workers rose by about 14.8 percent to just $13.60 in Fiscal Year 2016, according to the SEIU report, which was released last week (and got little media coverage, btw).
In contrast, the report noted, the law helped boost total compensation for CEOs of the corporate providers by 26 percent, to an annual average of $239,500.
According to the SEIU, raising wages of direct-care workers employed by provider agencies was a key goal of Chapter 257, and yet those workers “are still struggling to earn a living wage” of $15 per hour. The union contended that the funding increases made possible by Chapter 257 “did not come with any accountability measures, leaving it up to the private agencies to determine their own spending priorities.”
The SEIU report found that human services providers in the state received a total of $51 million in net or surplus revenues (over expenses) in Fiscal 2016, which would have been more than enough to raise the wages of all direct-care workers to the $15-per-hour mark. Yet, the providers have chosen not to do so.
Last week, the state Senate approved a budget amendment that would require human services providers to spend as much as 75 percent of their state funding each year in order to boost the pay of their direct-care workers to $15 per hour. The amendment had not been approved in the House, so it will now go to a House-Senate conference committee.
The SEIU report provides confirmation of a report by COFAR in 2012 that direct-care workers in the Department of Developmental Services’ contracted system had seen their wages stagnate and even decline in recent years while the executives running the corporate agencies employing those workers were getting double-digit increases in their compensation.
In January 2015, a larger COFAR survey of some 300 state-funded providers’ nonprofit federal tax forms found that more than 600 executives employed by those companies received some $100 million per year in salaries and other compensation. By COFAR’s calculations, state taxpayers were on the hook each year for up to $85 million of that total compensation.
The SEIU report stated that during the past six years, the providers it surveyed paid out a total of $2.4 million in CEO raises. The highest total CEO compensation in the union’s survey was that of Seven Hills Foundation’s CEO who received a total of $797,482 in Fiscal 2016. Seven Hills received $125 million in state funding that year, with most of that funding coming from DDS.
The SEIU report stated that the average direct-care employee at Seven Hills makes just $12.47 per hour, more than a dollar less than the average wage for workers across all the organizations analyzed in its report.
Vinfen, the third largest provider in the state, provided its CEO with a total of $387,081 in compensation in Fiscal 2016. Vinfen spent a total of $1.7 million on compensation for its top five executives in that fiscal year.
The potential for double-digit increases in CEO compensation was not mentioned by provider-based advocacy organizations that actually sued the then Patrick administration in 2014 to speed up the implementation of higher state funding under Chapter 257.
According to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the higher state funding was needed quickly in order to keep up with the rising costs of heat, rent and fuel, and to increase wages to direct-care staff in order to reduce high staff turnover.
In comments in support of the provider lawsuit in 2014, one key provider lobbyist contended that time was of the essence in boosting provider funding. “…Every day that full implementation (of Chapter 257) is delayed, the imbalance and the unfairness grows,” the lobbyist said.
Yet, according to the SEIU, the providers made 3.2 percent, 2.7 percent and 2.3 percent respectively in surplus revenues on average in the Fiscal 2014, 2015 and 2016 fiscal years. The imbalance that existed was actually between executive-level salaries and direct-care wages in those provider organizations.
As a result of the lawsuit, both the Patrick administration and the incoming Baker administration approved major funding increases to the provider-run group-home line item in the DDS budget, even as it was becoming clear the state was facing major budget shortfalls in the 2015 fiscal year.
“This all suggests,” last week’s SEIU report concluded, “that the amount of state funding is not at issue in the failure to pay a living wage to direct care staff, but rather, that the root of the problem is the manner in which the providers have chosen to spend their increased revenues absent specific conditions attached to the funding.”
Direct care workers deserve to be paid much more for their challenging work. This is how we show respect for the humans who need human services, and those who care for them. The further removed an employee or executive is from the individuals for whom the system exists, the less important that employee or executive is.
It’s time that we all, especially Democrats, stop using the term “low skilled” when defending low pay for anyone in the working class. I suppose that “low skilled” is the defensive term used to defend the starvation wages paid to these people. I doubt the positions in these group homes require much more than a high school diploma.
The notion that a citizen’s labor is of little worth simply because it does not require unique or highly toned skills omits the reality that these jobs are vital jobs that cannot be automated, off shored, or eliminated. Clearly, without these people, the CEO cannot take home his $239,500 in wages – or about a $115 hourly wage.
Is this CEO really adding an additional $100 per hour “value” to the company he or she is running? Hard to imagine that to be the case. Are the skills of the CEO so unique, so rare that their compensation is 856% higher than the individuals with actual contact with the residents of the homes? Hard to imagine that as true.
What is easy to imagine is that the CEO class of citizens in this nation, and this state, has convinced themselves, our government, and the working class that they really are that rare, that talented, that important.
They are not.