COFAR blog

Two ongoing cases involving human services workers are illustrative of the challenges those workers face in getting decent wages and working conditions, particularly in privatized facilities funded by the state.

In both cases, the SEIU Local 509 human services union has either represented the workers or has tried to organize them to join the union.

In an interview, Peter MacKinnon, the president of the local, discussed the cases and the implications they have for care throughout the Department of Developmental Services system.

Earlier this month, workers at CLASS, Inc., a DDS-funded day program provider based in Lawrence, engaged in a five-day strike at the facility for a living wage.

MacKinnon said that although the CLASS strike ended on July 13, the contract dispute had not been resolved. The workers there are getting paid about $13 an hour and wanted a $1 increase. The company is only offering an increase of only 40 cents.

The president of CLASS made about $187,500 a year in Fiscal Year 2017, according to the state’s online UFR database.  The CFO made $132,900 that year.

Last month Gov. Baker signed a bill into law that would establish a $15 an hour living wage as of 2023.

In a second ongoing case, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Triangle, Inc., another DDS day program provider, over allegations that the provider had fired some of its workers for trying to organize a vote to join the SEIU.

MacKinnon said that Malden-based Triangle recently agreed to a settlement of that case under which the fired workers will be either reinstated or provided with financial compensation, and  a vote to unionize will be held early next month. He said the union is satisfied with the settlement.

We published a blog post in March noting that Triangle had received $10.2 million in revenue in Fiscal 2017, including $6.9 million in funding from DDS, according to the state’s online UFR database.  Coleman Nee, the Triangle CEO, was listed on the UFR database as having received $223,570 in total compensation in Fiscal 2017. That may not have covered  an entire year with the agency.

That year’s tax filing listed six executives as making over $100,000 at Triangle.

MacKinnon noted that human services workers:

…do some of the hardest work in the human service field, and these are folks who are getting paid the least…When you have pay that low and work that difficult, it causes difficulties in retaining and recruiting staff.

Both COFAR and the SEIU have reported on the huge disparity in pay received by provider executives and direct-care workers in the DDS system.  We reported in 2012 that workers for DDS-funded providers 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.

Nevertheless, much of the mainstream media still does not appear to understand this dynamic. The Lawrence Eagle Tribune quoted a spokesperson for CLASS, Inc. three days after the CLASS, Inc. strike began as saying the state had reduced rates to the providers to pay workers.

In fact, as the SEIU has reported, a 2008 law known as Chapter 257 enabled human services providers in the state to garner some $51 million in net or surplus revenues (over expenses) in Fiscal 2016.  Yet, while raising wages of direct-care workers was a key goal of Chapter 257, those workers were still struggling to earn a living wage” of $15 per hour as of 2016, according to the SEIU.

The SEIU report, which got minimal news coverage, noted that Chapter 257 helped boost total compensation for CEOs of the corporate providers by 26 percent, to an annual average of $239,500.

The struggle to make headway in bringing about better pay and conditions for human services workers is a painstaking one. “If you want to attract and retain qualified experts in direct care, you need education, training, and in some cases advanced degrees, so you have to compensate these people fairly,” MacKinnon noted. “The old adage that a bad boss is the best organizer really holds true.”

MacKinnon said Local 509 now represents about 6,700 human services workers in Massachusetts working for about 40 providers of DDS and the departments of Mental Health, Children and Families, and Elder Affairs. That’s a good number, but still only a small fraction of the providers out there.

Next month, we’re scheduled to meet with state Senator Joan Lovely, the Senate chair of the Legislature’s Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities Committee. Among the messages we hope to convey in the meeting are that the Legislature needs to get involved in helping fight for better pay and conditions for those caring for some of the most vulnerable members of our society.