Nassau pols rip home health industry on deferred raise

Members of the Nassau County Legislature criticized the home health care industry Monday for failing to justify its request for legislation that would defer a promised $1 hourly pay raise due to its low-income workers.

The Republican presiding officer who had introduced the bill told industry officials to provide more documentation and scheduled a special session of the legislature on Monday, just a week before the raise was to go into effect.

"Suggestions are made that if this $1 an hour goes into effect on Aug. 1, people are going to lose jobs Aug. 2," Legis. Peter Schmitt of Massapequa said after industry officials had testified for more than an hour.

He said the industry should have been able to say how many of the 35 agencies that employ the workers in Nassau County had a sense of the potential for job loss, and the extent of that loss.

"Because what we have to do is balance . . . the need to protect the jobs, which everybody wants to do, with the unquestioned need of the workers to get an additional $1 an hour if they can. And we haven't gotten that here yet today," Schmitt said.

Bob Callaghan, a consultant to the industry, told legislators that deferring the raise would save jobs, but he was unable to provide an estimate of how many. Nonetheless, he warned that, "you will decimate the home-care delivery system in the county," if the bill is passed.

The increase is the fourth and final step of wage hikes mandated in 2006 by the legislature under the Living Wage Bill, which applies to companies that provide services to the county.

About 2,500 to 3,000 workers now making $11.50 an hour, are covered by the legislation, according to estimates by the county comptroller's office and the workers' union, 1199 SEIU, the United Healthcare Workers Union.

Workers now average $22,000, and would lose out on about $2,080 if the raise is blocked, the union said.