The dispute is embodied in Initiative 1029, which would require criminal background checks and training for home-care aides who dress, bathe and feed people whose age or disabilities prevent them from doing those chores by themselves.

Supporters of the measure say they will turn in more than 300,000 petition signatures on Thursday. That’s well beyond the 224,880 signatures required to win a spot on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

There’s no dispute over whether such workers should be screened for criminal activities before they’re certified by the state. Nor is there disagreement over whether those workers should get more training to better care for their charges.

In fact, the Legislature nearly passed a bill earlier this year that would have required both. But last-minute maneuvering derailed the bill.

At the core of the dispute is this: How much money should the state spend to train home-care aides?

The Legislature was willing to pay for 35 hours of training for all workers, and additional hours for those who want specialized training. But the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 34,000 home-care workers, wants all workers to have at least 75 hours of training.

The higher level of training would cost about $120 million over the next four years, with state and federal taxpayers each paying half.

That’s why the Legislature balked, said Rep. Dawn Morrell, a Puyallup Democrat who was the prime sponsor of the home-care training bill.

“They wanted everybody in the state to go through their training, and I didn’t want to spend that kind of money,” Morrell said of union officials Friday. “I have only so much money to spend on long-term care and I didn’t want all of it going toward training.”

Morrell said that money would have been deposited into a special training trust account that the Legislature created last year and that the SEIU would “use to recruit union members.”

“It’s not my job to organize unions,” she said. “I think the Legislature had a good plan. I hope they don’t get the signatures so we can pass our bill next year, but they probably will.”

Morrell said the legislative plan was put together by three nurses: herself; Rep. Tami Green, D-Lakewood; and Rep. Eileen Cody, D-Seattle.

Adam Glickman, spokesman for SEIU Local 775, said there seems to be some misunderstanding about how the training trust account works.

“The only workers who will get their training through this are workers who are already in a union,” Glickman said. “It would not have an impact on workers who are not in a union.”

Nancy Dapper, executive director of the Western and Central Washington chapters of the Alzheimer’s Association, said her group is backing I-1029 because home-care aides need to be taught the skills to care for people with dementia.

“You can’t give somebody a pill and their blood pressure goes down,” Dapper said. “You have increasing behavior problems, and we want to make sure caregivers in our state know how to appropriately care for people with the disease.”

Home-care workers don’t have the readily available medical staff support that’s found in a nursing home, she said.

“They don’t have a supervisor. They’re really on their own,” Dapper said. “I just want them to have good grounding in training.”

PRIVATE CARE TREATED DIFFERENTLY

The Community Care Coalition of Washington, which has formed to opposed I-1029, says not everyone needs the level of training the ballot measure would require. For one, many caregivers are people who are taking care only of family members and they don’t want to pursue a career in health care, said Susan “Sam” Miller, part owner and director of clinical services for CareForce Inc. in Lynnwood.

CareForce is company that provides the same kinds of home-care workers and services, but for clients and patients who have insurance or pay their own bills. The SEIU represents independent providers and employees of companies that get paid by the state under the Medicaid program.

Miller said the private-pay companies would have to cover the cost of training their own workers.

She also said state law already requires criminal background checks. The initiative says the state – not the workers – must pay for the background checks.

The coalition against I-1029 serves about 500,000 customers a year and has a work force of about 30,000 people. Most home-care services are provided by private-pay companies, she said.

“There’s no evidence that more training is needed,” Miller said. State law already requires 34 hours of basic training and additional hours for other specialty care and continuing education, she said.

Miller said she’s afraid that requiring so much training would drive workers away from those entry-level jobs in the health care field because would-be workers won’t take the classes.

Home-care aides are paid about $10 an hour.

UNION HAS USED THE BALLOT BEFORE

Under I-1029, people taking care of parents or children would be exempt from most additional training, but not family members who are taking care of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles or other relations.

“The SEIU has basically repackaged what we already have,” said Aaron Mountain, past president of the Washington Residential Care Council, which represents 2,200 adult family homes. “All they are doing is creating a pool of caregivers. What they want to do is unionize all long-term care workers.”

The SEIU has been down this path before. The union used the initiative process to gain the right to organize and represent about 26,000 home-care workers in 2001. In fact, Local 775 takes its name from the number of the initiative that gave those workers the right to negotiate with the governor’s office for pay and benefits – I-775.

Morrell said the union threatened to mount another initiative campaign if its leaders couldn’t get the Legislature to approve the higher level of hours for training.

Rep. Green said she signed the I-1029 petition. She believe home-care workers need more training and she doesn’t see it as a union recruiting tool.

“The three of us nurses felt the additional training hours should be optional,” Green said. “I think where we have the angst over the bill is how much is the state going to pay for and how much is the union going to kick in.”

She also believes too many training hours could be barriers to entry-level workers who don’t have a high school education or who speak English as a second language.

Cody said the bill that almost passed the Legislature this spring would have required all home-care aides to register with the state, which would make them subject to disciplinary sanctions.

“But we didn’t want to say that they all have to have a certification, too,” Cody said. “A big percentage of workers who are individual providers are family members of the people they are taking care of. We didn’t see how it benefits the state to put a lot of money into training for someone who wasn’t going to take care of anybody else (nonfamily).”

Green and Cody are SEIU members. They belong to SEIU Local 1199, the nurses union. Morrell, a critical-care nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup, belongs to a different union.

Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436

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