Long Term Care Workers and the Board of Supervisors have held three bargaining sessions in Ventura County. Homecare workers on the bargaining team are hoping to make progress and improve their wages and benefits, but there is much work yet to do.
With the high cost of living in Ventura County, the average cost of a home is $575,000 and the average median income is $52,298. Homecare Workers average $834 per month, $10,008 annually.
We are making it clear that unless homecare workers receive a wage increase, the elderly and disabled population in Ventura County will be unable to find and retain providers.
On November 6, 2008, as a result of the announcement from the Governor to propose cuts to the IHSS program, the Public Authority canceled our scheduled negotiations. The Public Authority’s position is that they are unable to provide any responses to our economic proposals until they have a final answer on the State Budget reductions to the IHSS Program. They want to resume negotiations in the last week of November or the first week of December. Our position as stated in our letter to the Public Authority is that we have submitted the economic and non-economic proposal to them at their request.
There should be no obstacle in continuing our negotiations on November 20, 2008 at 5:30 p.m. to further discuss the non-economic proposals that we submitted initially. We are now waiting a response from the Public Authority.