Worker Co-ops Center the Caregiver
By empowering caregivers as worker-owners, the cooperative model recognizes the true value in care.
Co-ops emphasize high-quality training so that workers can take pride in the care they provide.
Worker cooperatives are a well-established, effective intervention that support greater income and wealth redistribution and higher job retention.
As the demand for care increases and workforce shortages persist, long-term care (LTC) depends more and more on immigrant and undocumented workers. Cooperatives can uplift, protect, and empower both these workers and their clients.
Empowered Caregivers
Co-ops emphasize high-quality training because it helps workers take pride in providing care for their clients.
And as the combination of sky-high demand for care and perennial workforce shortages has created an informal economy contingent on undocumented workers specifically, cooperatives can uplift, protect, and empower both these workers and their clients.
Shared Benefits
Co-ops ensure that workers' voices are heard in business decisions and that the workers themselves share in the profits.
With caregiving at the center of the cooperative model, both workers and their clients reap greater benefits.
Caregiver challenges in our current long-term care system.
Care is essential, care work is precarious
Care work is critical to our economy and provides immeasurable value to clients, their families and loved ones, and society. Home and nursing home care require physical strength, emotional intelligence, strong interpersonal and communication skills, and exceptional attention to detail.
Yet, care jobs offer low wages, limited benefits, inconsistent hours, and a general lack of respect and recognition. For a workforce of predominantly Black, Latina, and Asian women who are often immigrants, this low job quality makes economic insecurity even worse.
Private equity investment, for-profit ownership threatens care and job quality
As demand for care rises, the market for private investment in care is growing. These companies are focused on cost savings in the healthcare system. But rather than increasing affordability and access to care or investment in the care workforce, cost savings are channeled back to investors.
How are worker cooperatives different?
Worker-owned LTC co-ops:
Directly combat workforce shortages and turnover
Set higher standards for care
Recognize that the true value in care is the caregiver
Worker Co-ops In Action
Cooperative Home Care Associates (New York, NY
“At Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), we have worked for decades on building a model home care agency designed to demonstrate how investing in quality jobs is important for both home care workers and clients. Established in 1985, CHCA is now the largest worker-owned cooperative in the United States, growing from twelve home care workers to a pre-pandemic high of twenty-three hundred workers…
Workers in a cooperative are owners, and with ownership comes the opportunity to vote on key decisions, serve as part of a governing body, and have a stake in profits generated by the work. CHCA develops and trains workers to advocate for policy changes needed to improve jobs in the field. And within the organization, we improve job quality by providing robust training both in how to be a home care worker and what it means to be a member of the cooperative.”
Courage Worker Owner, Fatima Testimonial
“At first, I was making only $1500 per month for working around the clock caring for 6 to 18 individuals at small residential care facilities. I then worked as a one-on-one, live-in caregiver where I was working 5 to 7 days a week around the clock, mostly lightly sleeping next to clients to help respond to any needs throughout the night. I earned $400-$600 per week which is just about $3-$5 per hour with no overtime. No sick leave and of course no pay for any leave - the common saying of “No Work, No Pay.”
In 2017 I became a member of COURAGE Homecare. This is the first time I experienced earning as a caregiver with all of my labor rights intact. We would mostly work in shifts to be able to provide 24 hour care for clients who need it, but because of the pandemic I am working 3 days a week around the clock, but now I earn over $5000 for working three days with overtime compensation. This is more than I was making in 3 months for working 5 days a week before.”
