BOSTON, MA (September 21, 2016) – Workers at Medical Resources Home Health Corp. overwhelmingly ratified a new two-year contract, the first contract at the company and the first contract with a private homecare provider in Massachusetts since the 2005 merger creating the current configuration of our union.

The contract creates a wage scale at Medical Resources that ensures workers will be compensated for their experience and maintains consumers’ choice for their care. It will also address pay iniquities that resulted in some new employees earning a higher wage rate than employees who had worked at Medical Resources for two decades.

Under the contract, some employees will receive a raise of more than $2 an hour – equaling more than $10,000 over two years for a fulltime worker. Every employee will receive an immediate minimum wage increase of at least $.99 cents/hour, with some raises as high as $2.52 an hour. The contract also gives Medical Resources workers access to the 1199SEIU Training and Upgrading Fund and compensation for both their travel time to and waiting time between appointments.

Last year, homecare workers from Medical Resources voted to organize and join our union. A bargaining committee for the company’s 250 private homecare agency workers – many of them Chinese and Latino – spent the past year analyzing documents and negotiating with executives. Workers negotiated the contract across three different languages, securing a number of new benefits for a workforce that had been mistreated in the past. Workers will soon receive at least five days of paid time off – made possible by converting the right to state-mandated earned sick time to paid time off so that it can be used for any reason.

Click here to see photos from the contract vote!