The potential effects of an anti-union ruling in Janus v. AFSCME could already be on display in Orange County, where a right-to-work group scored a win involving orientations for new in-home health care aides.
Toni Monique is an in-home caregiver who talks like a political philosopher when she is not taking care of her sister, Tonya Ginn, in Buena Park. When told that the Freedom Foundation, an organization with financial ties to right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch, had recently moved into California to undermine her union, she got downright angry.
Disabled and elderly Californians have cause to worry as time marches forward to June 30, 2016. That’s the deadline for Governor Jerry Brown and state legislators to find a permanent solution to keep whole one of California’s largest assistance programs for the state’s most vulnerable populations.
For this fiscal year, a seven percent cut– $226 million–was restored to the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program in June. But without solid funding for the future, nearly a million adults, children and their caregivers face losing hours of service and wages again.
The restoration of the cuts was a huge victory for consumers of IHSS’s services, according to Brandi Wolf, California policy director for the United Long Term Care Workers (ULTCW), “but living from year to year [involves] a tremendous amount of uncertainty. We can’t ask consumers to live in this uncertain world.” ULTCW, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, represents many IHSS workers.
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