Virginia home care workers fight for collective bargaining rights

A bill that would lift Virginia’s ban on public sector bargaining may exclude underpaid and in-demand home care workers. They’re fighting back.

Her husband told Samira Brooks not to go, but she did anyway. 

It was April of 2020 and Brooks had Covid-19. She was supposed to be resting, but something sounded wrong when she was on the phone with the elderly woman she’d looked after for years as a home care provider.  

Brooks got out of bed and threw a mask on. When she got to the woman’s home in Exmore on the Eastern Shore, Brooks found her slouched over. Her breathing was shallow. Brooks called 911 and later learned the woman had Covid pneumonia. 

Brooks made around $8 an hour at the time, but didn’t get paid for visits like this done on her own time for a woman who had no one else to rely on. 

But Brooks can see no other way of doing this work; she views home care as a way of life, not merely a job she’s done for more than 20 years. 

“Caregiving doesn’t start or end with the clock,” Brooks said in an interview. “It doesn’t start or end with a paycheck. Caregiving is lifelong. It’s rooted in me.” 

Brooks does the work despite experiences with sexual harassment, 12-hour days, and the need to take care of other people when she’s not on the clock. She does it because taking care of others makes her feel “like an angel on Earth.” 

“You’re doing it from the heart,” Brooks said. “You’re doing it because you care. You’re doing it because you see somebody in great need.”

Still, Brooks, 47, and other members of her union, Service Employees International Union Virginia 512, know they deserve more than what society gives them.  

Today, many home care providers in Virginia make just $13.88 an hour, and Brooks makes $18.50 an hour. The work comes with no health insurance, no paid time off, and no retirement benefits. That’s despite the growing demand for in-home care for the elderly and people living with disabilities. 

As part of their fight for fair compensation, Brooks, who lives on the Eastern Shore, and her fellow workers want the right to collective bargaining. As workers paid with Medicaid dollars administered by the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services, they are considered public sector workers, and Virginia bans public sector workers from collective bargaining. 

The state Legislature is getting ready to pass a bill that lifts that ban, but it’s not clear if the final version of that legislation will include or exclude home care workers like Brooks. Brooks wants a seat at the table to bargain for better pay and offer up input about a job that asks so much of the people that do it. 

“We use our bodies as a tool,” Brooks said. “We use our mind as a tool. We use our emotions as a tool for other people to lean on. We use our whole entire being for other people and we get nothing back for it but a small paycheck and ‘Thank you.’”

Home care providers are overwhelmingly women and women of color, two groups that have a long history of being underpaid for their work.  

“Home care work is rooted in the history of enslaved women, enslaved people, and so it’s just a constant situation where this workforce has been held back,” said LaNoral Thomas, president of SEIU Virginia 512.

In Virginia there are about 28,000 independent providers and an additional 30,000 home care providers who work with an agency to connect with families and people looking for care. Thomas said many of them in Virginia depend on some form of public assistance because their wages are so low. 

“No one who goes to work every day and works as hard as home care providers work should have to depend on public assistance, nor do they want to,” Thomas said. “And so it’s just time to fix the broken system.”