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After months of organizing and lobbying, home care workers serving seniors through the Community Care Program won a rate increase that will raise the wage floor to $18.75/hour beginning January 1, 2026!

We activated members in every part of the state to join the fight and echo our demands to raise pay for home care workers. Beginning in January and throughout the spring we took action to make our voices heard by:

• Attending weekly lobby days at the capitol to meet with lawmakers face-to-face,
• Organizing large scale demonstrations in March and May that saw record attendance,
• Collecting hundreds of selfies and stories online to show lawmakers the faces and names of home care workers in their districts,
• Coordinating “walk-a-day” events throughout the state where lawmakers shadowed us to get a front row seat and observe the work we do day in and day out for our clients, and
• Running a patch through call program where we connected members and our clients over the phone to state legislative offices.

We also took action with our coalition partners in the Illinois Revenue Alliance to demand lawmakers address our budget deficit by making the ultra-wealthy and large corporations pay what they owe. This was an extremely difficult budget climate where revenue shortfalls left important state programs on the chopping block.

But because we stuck together and fought side-by-side in our union, we were able to overcome this obstacle and win a raise at a time when some lawmakers were threatening budget cuts.

Our fight isn’t finished yet. We need to keep fighting back against threats to Medicaid funding from the federal government, and we need to re-focus our efforts on demanding the wealthy pay their taxes so we can continue to increase our investments in home care services for seniors.

The new increase in state funding we just won will trigger the re-opener clause in our agreements with private home care agency, so we’ll be headed back to the bargaining table in the coming months to negotiate the implementation of this new rate increase and our raises, so stay tuned for information!

This victory is another step forward toward our long-term goal of $25/hour, and is an example of what we can achieve when we work together.