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Long-term care workers – including group home workers, home care providers, and nursing home workers – held a press conference on Tuesday, February 7th in Hearing Room 1C of the Legislative Office Building. Workers demand “$25 for 2025”, and other protections that will lift Connecticut’s frontline caregivers out of poverty and improve services.
In anticipation of Governor Ned Lamont’s annual budget address, long-term care workers providing direct care in Connecticut’s nursing homes, group homes, and at the private homes of elderly and disabled individuals, will continue standing together, making sure their voices are heard and that their work is valued accordingly. Crafting a legislative path to $25 per hour minimum wage for long-term care workers is the right place to start.
For years, long-term care workers have sacrificed their lives through short-staffing conditions, while being under-compensated with low wages and, in many cases, inadequate or nonexistent benefits that leave caregivers without access to affordable health insurance, housing, paid sick days, and funding for retirement. The services provided by the long-term care members of SEIU 1199NE are mostly funded by state and federal Medicaid dollars.
SEIU District 1199NE, the New England Health Care Employees Union, represents over 25,000 caregivers in Connecticut and some 4,000 in Rhode Island. Historically known as “1199” going back to the Civil Rights Movement, we are a bold, democratic Union with a long activist tradition fighting for racial and economic justice to improve the lives of Black, Latina, APII, and white working-class communities.
Watch the Press Conference below:
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