Home care workers who help senior citizens and the disabled bathe, get dressed and do other jobs around the house will benefit from the higher minimum wage ordinance that the San Diego City Council passed this week.
After the council's vote Monday, some thought the ordinance had a provision that might make home care workers exempt, but City Council President Todd Gloria said the ordinance was drafted so no one will be left out.
Some of these workers are employed by private home care companies, while others work for county or state In-Home Supportive Services programs, or IHSS.
Many of these workers are paid minimum wage. But when the council voted to raise those wages to $11.50 an hour by 2017, there was some confusion.
It seemed to stem from a paragraph in the ordinance:
Employer means any person or persons, as defined in California Labor Code section 18, who exercises control over the wages, hours, or working conditions of any Employee, or suffers or permits the Employee to work, or engages the Employee. Employer does not include a person receiving services under the California In-Home Supportive Services program pursuant to Welfare and Institutions Code section 12300.
That means the seniors who receive the care through IHSS aren't considered employers, a spokesman from the City Attorney's Office said.
But Gloria's spokeswoman, Katie Keach, said just because the seniors aren't employers doesn't mean the workers are exempt from the minimum wage increase.
"The elderly person is excluded from the definition of Employer, BUT an In-Home Supportive Services Provider must still pay their workers the minimum wage," Keach wrote in an email. She also pointed out that some home care workers are employed by private companies, not IHSS providers.
Workers employed by a state or county IHSS program outside the city of San Diego are still included in the minimum wage law.
The ordinance says that anyone who works inside San Diego's boundaries for two hours a week, at least one week a year, is eligible for the raise.
Keach said the language about who is the employer of IHSS workers was included "because the Council President felt the language was good policy."
"If the interpretation of state labor code were to change regarding who is the 'employer,' then impoverished senior citizens wouldn't wind up on the hook," she wrote in an email.
In interviews after the ordinance passed, Gloria said he heard from many companies that claimed to support the wage increase but also wanted to be exempt from it. He said he didn't want to start a chain reaction by exempting anyone.
"That really is an open door that has no end," he said. "The minimum wage is meant to be a floor, on which no one falls. And so by exempting particular groups, I think that violates the spirit of what we're trying to accomplish by trying to make sure that no one goes below a certain level."
He added that not including any exemptions in the law will decrease administration costs.
"This is the more simple and elegant approach," he said.
