At midday on an early-September Wednesday, in a nondescript office building in Quincy, something spectacular happened — something that will change the lives of 58,000 Massachusetts workers, their loved ones, and their neighbors.
There, the union representing personal care attendants and the Healey administration agreed on the terms of a new contract that will, once ratified, bring dignity and better pay to people whose essential work is too often invisible.
If you’re elderly or have a disability and need help at home — or you might one day — what happened in that union hall is a big deal for you, too.
Personal care attendants are the dedicated folks who help those who need it with daily tasks like showering, dressing, and eating, and who qualify for MassHealth. They also tend to people with more complicated needs.
The new contract will give the workers an initial raise from $18 an hour to $19, add a $3.25 per hour premium for working with clients who have more complex needs, and provide a pathway for some attendants to make $25.65 an hour within three years. They’ll now be paid for training that used to cost them money. And they’ll have retirement accounts.
They’ll also gain two more official holidays — significant ones, given that the overwhelming majority of people doing this work are people of color: Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.
“The holidays are astronomical,” said Isaias Ruiz, a PCA in Bellingham who spends 30 to 40 hours a week helping the wheelchair-bound mother of a friend with dressing, meals, hygiene, and doctor visits. It is expensive to live in this state, so in addition to his main client, Ruiz also works two other jobs as a certified nursing assistant and with 1199SEIU, which represents the PCAs.
For him and for his colleagues, the pay hike will be transformative.
“I can finally struggle less,” said Janice Guzman, a 45-year-old PCA who cares full-time for her mother, who has Parkinson’s and dementia, as well as other clients. “I won’t need a third job, so I can stay at home more with mom.”
Guzman, on the union bargaining team, said that, in addition to being life-changing, the contract agreement ― and the solidarity in the negotiations that led to it — has been empowering.
“We were not considered essential workers, and being a person of color, you are always downgraded,” she said. “Now our dignity will be recognized.”
This contract has always been about racial justice as much as fair working conditions, said Rebecca Gutman, vice president of home care at 1199SEIU. That is why their fight for better conditions began with a rally at “The Embrace,” the public sculpture commemorating the Kings. And right beside the workers were the clients who also bear the brunt of those low wages, some languishing without help because the work is so hard, and so underpaid, that not enough people want to do it.
But the impact of this contract goes far beyond PCAs and their clients. It means personal care attendants will be able to better support their families, lifting some of them out of poverty, and making them less reliant on public assistance. The new contract will cost more taxpayer money, but so do programs like SNAP and MassHealth. In any case, keeping elderly people and those with disabilities at home with help from PCAs is far cheaper for everyone than housing them in hospitals and nursing homes.
And workers will put their pay raises right back into their communities, in grocery stores and restaurants and housing.
“This is about investing in this workforce, and in the communities they live in,” Gutman said. “We see it as an economic stimulus. It really does have a ripple effect.”
There are critical masses of these workers in Gateway Cities that desperately need that stimulus. Springfield alone is home to some 8,000 personal care attendants, Gutman said. The city will feel it when 5 percent of its population gets a significant pay bump.
The union hasn’t stopped fighting. In future contracts, the workers hope to get health insurance and other benefits enjoyed by the middle class.
But this is an event to celebrate, a huge win — for all of us.
Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com.