Those who take care of others, such as personal care assistants, home health aides, and nursing attendants, fall under a category called direct support workers. In New Mexico, they make an average of $11 an hour. But proposed legislation would change that.
The president of the New Mexico Caregivers Coalition, Adrienne Smith, said that 62,000 caregivers in the state often depend on the same aid programs used by their clients.
“In fact, 60% of caregivers themselves qualify for Medicaid. There are people in the workforce who work sometimes two and three jobs just to make ends meet who themselves are on Medicaid,” Smith said.
Smith said these low wages, combined with labor shortages, make it challenging to address the longstanding waitlist for services for those who have a developmental disability waiver. State law mandates this backlog be cleared by 2024.
That’s why the coalition is seeking $8.4 million in the Direct Support Workforce Stabilization Act. The law would create a competitive base wage for direct support workers (at least 150% of the highest minimum wage in New Mexico accounting for local laws, cost of living, changes in minimum wage rates, and funding shortfalls) and address the lack of information on them through a new workforce data collection system.
Nationally, 87% of Direct Support Workers are women and 53% women of color. But New Mexico lacks that kind of information on caregivers here. The law requires the state and providers to participate in a staff stability survey and publicly report these data for New Mexico.
Caregivers were not included in the expansion of workers’ rights in the last century, Smith explained.
“In 1938, our country passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which applied to all workers in our country, except for domestic workers, nannies, home health, … caregivers and also field workers,” Smith stated.
While union struggles improved labor standards last century, whole sectors of unpaid work of associated with slavery were left out. In 2019, the coalition helped pass legislation extending rights for direct support workers.
The Health and Human Services committee meets in Las Cruces this week and Smith wants them to hear from the community on the proposed legislation. She pointed out that now is when the laws are crafted.
“They want to know what the issues are now, so that they can at least have some sense of how they're leaning once the session starts,” Smith said.
The session starts in January 2023. The Health and Human Services Committee hears testimony on the Direct Support Workforce Stabilization Act on Thursday, October 6 at 10 am. People can view the hearings online or attend in person to register their views of the proposed law. For more information on the meeting, call (505) 986-4600 or send an email to Andrea Lazarow, Andrea.Lazarow@nmlegis.gov, lead staff and bill drafter of the Legislative Health and Human Service Committee.