Personal Assistance: Lousy Wages

Personal Assistance has once been an achievement of the disabled people's movement so that mentally handicapped and disabled people can live a self-determined life. The handicapped person's assistance should gain a decent wage – theoretically. Health funds, public health care funds, social welfare offices, employment centres and private nursing services impede it.

In our case, a comrade from FAU Westmecklenburg, who worked for a company named “Ohne Barrieren” (Engl.: Without Barriers) in Rostock, received 5,98 Euro per hour. With help of his syndicate, northern FAU secretariat and Unabhängige ArbeitnehmerInnenvertretung in der persönlichen Assistenz (UAPA, Engl.: Autonomous Employee Organisation Personal Assistance) he is going to sue his employer for giving him such a lousy poverty wage. Now they can nullify his labour contract and decide on a higher wage. In the best of cases, he will receive compensation for his complete employment time.

Which are specific problems of “personal assistance”?

There is going to be a problem calculating the average wage of personal assistance workers. At the one hand there is no standardised name for this job and on the other hand there is a wide choice of workings. Additionally, there are masses of employers which makes a general view on wages extremely difficult.

What happened so far?

There was a television report on lousy wages of personal assistance workers, but nothing happened. Then, some month later, cost rates have been newly negotiated. The result: Without Barriers receives an additional amount of 3 Euro per worker. Yet, they are only willing to give 80 Cent to the workers!

In the meantime our comrade found a better job. Once he earned 5,98 Euro hourly, now it’s 9,48. But he is still doing a comparable job. It is possible to earn decent wages in East Germany.

At Court

Besides individual compensation for our comrade, we hope to give a political signal, recognized by the branch. With our success at court, colleagues, at least those which earn lousy wages too, will be able to demand payment later and poverty wages for personal assistances will be no more.

FAU Westmecklenburg