Oregon home care workers protest late paychecks from state agency, cite hardships

Oregon home care workers raised concerns Thursday about systemic problems with state paychecks not arriving on time, sometimes putting them in dire financial straits.

About 50 home care workers gathered in front of the Oregon Department of Human Services headquarters in Salem to deliver hundreds of letters containing personal stories about checks arriving too late to pay bills.

They chanted outside and inside the building's main entrance as the stack of letters was delivered.

The concerns come in part from a survey that the Service Employees International Union Local 503 conducted of state home care and personal support workers.

Out of 1,950 workers responding to the survey, 42% reported getting paid late, the SEIU reported. That's out of about 30,000 home care and personal support workers in Oregon. 

"This kind of systemic problem does not happen in other jobs. It's unacceptable. The State needs to show us the respect we deserve as workers," said Rebecca Sandoval, a home care worker from Medford and vice president of the SEIU unit that represents home care workers.

"We need to see real solutions from the state to address its out-of-date payroll system," she said. "The current system is creating a financial crisis for too many home care and personal support workers. All workers deserve to be paid on time."

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2.2% of payments in 2018 were late

In a statement, Human Services spokeswoman Sherryll Johnson Hoar said the agency is "committed to ensuring that personal support and home care workers, who are so crucial to the people we serve, are paid on time and compensated for all of their work."

However, Johnson Hoar added that the state's data show the "vast majority of payments" are made on times. Late payments can come from incomplete information the state receives or an error the state makes, she said.

The workers fall into two groups. One is personal support workers, who help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities through the Office of Developmental Disabilities Services system. The other is home care workers, who help the aging and disabled through the state's Aging and People with Disabilities program.

For personal support workers, 99.9% of 729,527 payments in 2018 were on time, she said. There were 483 late payments. 

The state provided similar figures for home care workers: 97.8% of 416,704 payments were on time. That translates into 2.2 percent, or 9,089 late payments. 

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'I almost lost my home'

For workers that live paycheck to paycheck, missing one can be devastating. 

Noemi Sarmiento, a home care worker in Gresham, said she's faced problems getting her June pay.

"I almost lost my home," she said. Her husband is disabled from an accident and she has two daughters and a grandson to support. "I was forced to get assistance from the state."

Rita Adamski, a home care worker in Salem, said she had a late paycheck several years ago. Though it was resolved, she said the prospect of it happening again creates uncertainty and stress. 

"I need to pay all my bills and need all my income to do that," she said. 

Home care workers take care of the elderly and disabled in their homes and aren't traditional state employees who automatically get paychecks like most agency employees.

That's because their clients hire them through Department of Human Services programs. The department's two programs have slightly different processing systems, that require workers to submit information. 

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Sometimes, paperwork problems happen because hours don't match the client's information or signatures are missing, agency officials said. 

They said they meet regularly with SEIU representatives to talk about issues. 

Ben Botkin covers Oregon state government. To support his work, subscribe to the Statesman Journal. You can reach him at bbotkin@StatesmanJournal.com, 503-399-6687 or follow him on Twitter @BenBotkin1