State budget cuts devastating for community disability workers
Of all the outrages included in the sweeping budget cuts that state lawmakers made in the final days of the legislative session, few are more outrageous than the elimination of any funding for wage increases for community disability workers.
With average wages below the federal poverty level, workers in community disability agencies funded by the state have to struggle just to get by, often working a second job or excessive amounts of overtime.
For the past seven years, governors and legislators have failed to provide any form of cost-of-living adjustment to these agencies that rely almost entirely on their funding from the state of Illinois to provide round-the-clock residential care to individuals with developmental disabilities.
In response to this wage stagnation, AFSCME helped to form the Care Campaign, which brought together employers, advocacy groups, and frontline workers to press for wage fairness. Over the past months the Care Campaign waged a vigorous grassroots lobbying effort – including generating nearly 20,000 postcards to Governor Quinn – with a two key goals:
- Provide funding for a $1/hour wage increase for all community disability workers in the FY 15 budget
- Enact legislation (HB 3698/SB 2604) to raise the wages of all these workers above the poverty level – to a minimum of $13/hour
It was a great victory for the Care Campaign when Governor Quinn did include the $1/hour wage increase in the budget plan he presented earlier this year. But the governor made clear that his budget was predicated on the extension of the income tax rates currently in place.
When legislators failed to vote to extend the tax rates – setting the stage for the rates to roll back on January 1 – they proceeded to enact a final FY 15 budget that made steep cuts to many critical public services, including those provided by community disability agencies.
So, instead of funding for higher wages in the grant lines for community disability agencies, the budget as enacted actually cuts funding for those agencies by $6 million.
AFSCME intends to continue to wage the fight for fair wages for community disability workers. The union will make extension of the income tax a top priority to insure that funding will be available for this critical need.