Missouri Home Care Workers Push for Higher Wages

Missouri home care workers are asking lawmakers to allow a rule requiring higher pay for them to take effect.

Workers who are paid at least $7.50 an hour to bathe, feed and tend to Missourians who can't care for themselves gathered Monday at the Capitol to push for a minimum wage increase.

An agreement ratified by the state Quality Home Care Council allows those they care for to pay them between $8.50 and $10.15 an hour.

The Department of Health and Senior Services is working to put that increase into rule.

But companies that contract out workers say the raise would cause them financial hardship. Those companies now take a cut of the $15.56 an hour that the Legislature has budgeted from state Medicaid funds to pay each attendant.