Les Beck is a member of UDW, cares for his sister, Connie, who’s been almost totally blind since she was 18. PHOTO BY STEVE E. MILLER

Down with unions.
Long live unions.

Those two sentiments represent just about all you hear when you turn on the TV news or pick up a newspaper. Whether it’s the battles raging over union rights in Wisconsin or local fire and police unions facing off with the chamber of commerce, it’s easy to fall into the clichés peddled by both sides of the red and blue divide.

While government unions get a lot of press, most others operate out of the public eye; they represent workers that contribute to our lives in ways that are vital to modern life but are rarely acknowledged or even recognized.

New Times decided to look into some of these unions and see what life’s like for some of their locals and the workers they serve.

The importance of cherry purple

Connie loves getting her nails done.

Her fingernails gleamed with freshly painted polish as she returned to her house on a recent warm afternoon. The nails were a deep, dark, cherry purple, which happens to be her favorite color.

Though she’s been getting her nails painted that color nearly all her life, she hasn’t seen the shade in more than 50 years.

Connie is 67, and she’s been almost totally blind since she was 18. She was trapped in a house fire in 1967 and barely survived. The flames burned more than 50 percent of her body, disfiguring her hands. Doctors didn’t expect her to live.

But live she did. She learned to walk, and even to use her hands again.

“Hello, so nice to meet you,” Connie said to a reporter after her trip to the salon.

Though blind, hard of hearing, and recovering from a fall that broke both of her legs, Connie looked great.

“She can do nearly anything,” her brother, Les Beck, said after she left to exercise. He’s one of her caretakers and a board member of the Homecare Providers Union, the UDW (Union of Domestic Workers). “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

The real question is: What would Connie do without her brother and her other caretaker? Connie is one of thousands of disabled or aging persons who live on their own only through the help of a state program, In-Home Social Services (IHSS).

IHSS allows the elderly, the blind, and the disabled to stay in their homes instead of living in a nursing home. The government pays for a caretaker to assume responsibility for most of the patient’s needs—housecleaning, meal preparation, laundry, grocery shopping, personal care services, etc. To qualify for IHSS, you need to be in pretty rough shape: You must own less than $2,000 worth of property, not including your house.

Connie lives with her brother. A caretaker, Lynnette Osgood, minds her during the week, and Les attends to her on weekends.

Les is a retired schoolteacher and wasn’t much involved in the unions when he was working in that capacity. Things changed when he became a caretaker.

“The union goes to bat for you,” Les said. “They fight for better wages and benefits.”

Les said this as firmly as he could. He doesn’t fit any stereotype of a union leader. Mild-mannered and patient, Les looks like the kind of person you’re thankful to see over the table at a parent-teacher conference.

Caretakers don’t earn much—about $10 an hour—and have few benefits. Union workers attribute these relatively low wages to the endangered nature of California’s IHSS program; it’s been a constant target of state budget cutters. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to drastically cut the $5.5 billion program—the state pays $1.5 billion of that cost, the federal government and counties the rest—but was thwarted by the Democratic legislature. Gov. Jerry Brown proposed cutting $486 million from the program, which would have purged 87 percent of the patients from the rolls, leaving only the most needy. The legislature proposed lesser cuts, but the program’s future is still up in the air.

Connie would likely still be in the program, Les said, but the long-term prospects for both patients and the state’s pocketbook would be dire. The program’s patients would either wind up on the streets or likely flood nursing homes, which, in the end, would cost the taxpayer more than if they had remained in the program.

Connie was in a nursing home after she broke her legs in a fall. Her world shrunk to the size of her bed. The nurses didn’t know her or understand her needs. Sometimes they would give her the wrong meal or forget she was blind and place her food out of reach. It was a lonely place, a mere holding area for the elderly. A 101-year-old would come into her room and say there just wasn’t anyone to talk to anymore.

That’s the world Les is trying to save his sister from.

“It’s what we are fighting for,” he said.

As Les talked more about the union, it began to become clear that his enthusiasm for the organization is about more than protecting the rights of providers; it’s about protecting his sister and the program that lets her lead a life she can call her own.

Story written by Robert A. McDonald – http://www.newtimesslo.com