Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
One of the fastest-growing occupations is also a hot spot for wage theft complaints in Pennsylvania. A new initiative by state regulators aims to help change that.<\/p>\n
Nearly 40% of the minimum wage complaints sent to Pennsylvania\u2019s Department of Labor and Industry are from the home healthcare industry, state labor secretary Nancy Walker said at a news conference Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Under the new initiative, the state won\u2019t wait to receive new complaints, said Walker. Instead, regulators will audit home healthcare agencies, making \u201clegal demands for wage and hour information,\u201d said Walker, to find potential wage violations. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here today because these workers are not receiving the wages they earned, and that changes now,\u201d Walker said. <\/p>\n
Demand for home healthcare is expected to continue growing, but attracting workers to the industry has been a challenge.<\/p>\n
Many home healthcare workers, who help patients with daily living needs, have been shorted on their overtime pay<\/a> in Pennsylvania in recent years and employers have ultimately had to pay back millions in some instances. One contributing factor is that Medicaid doesn\u2019t pay home healthcare employers extra for overtime. <\/p>\n \u201cThe workers doing this care are not always treated the way we should be,\u201d Marshene Ellis, a home care worker for over 17 years, said at Tuesday\u2019s news conference. \u201cI\u2019ve worked for different agencies and seen the broken promises and low wages.\u201d <\/p>\n Making \u2018good jobs\u2019 in home healthcare<\/p>\n Pennsylvania is home to more than 257,000 home care workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but more are needed to meet demand, especially as the population ages. <\/p>\n Nationally, home health aide is expected to be one of the fastest growing<\/a> jobs in the coming decade, according to BLS, which predicts 847,300 more home health jobs by 2035. <\/p>\n In Pennsylvania, some 112,000 care shifts go unfilled every month, according to Matt Yarnell, president of the SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania union. <\/p>\n \u201cThat means somebody who cannot get themselves out of bed, is laying in that bed hoping someone shows up,\u201d said Yarnell. \u201cWe have a lot of work to do in this space.\u201d<\/p>\n Those in need, may find themselves in the emergency room instead, Yarnell added.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen families cannot find a home care worker, the impact is immediate,\u201d said Gabrielle Szymanski, of Pennsylvania\u2019s Department of Aging. \u201cFamily caregivers are forced to leave work or take on additional responsibilities, and providers struggle to meet demand \u2014 and too often people end up in more restrictive and more costly settings.\u201d<\/p>\n Attracting and retaining home-health workers has been challenging. Turnover is high in the industry, and wages are low. The median wage in Pennsylvania is $14.14 per hour.<\/p>\n Workers deserve higher wages, said Mia Haney, CEO of Pennsylvania Homecare Association in a statement on Tuesday and pointed to low Medicaid rates as part of the issue. <\/p>\n \u201cWe support holding bad actors accountable, but they should not define an industry overwhelmingly made up of providers committed to their workers and the people they serve,\u201d said Haney, whose organization represents nearly 700 home care and hospice providers.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Pennsylvania\u2019s home care industry is in crisis, with low pay and unfilled shifts driving it toward collapse<\/a><\/p>\n Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a>\u2019s administration recently added $21 million<\/a> to the state budget to boost home healthcare wages.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is really really critical that these become good jobs, and that will not happen on its own,\u201d said Yarnell. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min One of the fastest-growing occupations is also a hot spot for wage theft…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[116284,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-277544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-home-healthcare-workers-wage-theft-initiative-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}