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For months, THE CITY has investigated Home Healthcare Workers of America, the union that organized more new members than any other in New York City in the 18 months leading up to June 2024.
Its growth happened amid a rapid expansion of Medicaid-funded care for the elderly and people with disabilities at home in New York. HHWA, an affiliate of the International Union of Journeymen and Allied Trades, has exploded in size less than a decade after its founding — from 14,141 members in 2018 to the 43,000 it claims today.
That may seem like a big win for workers. But the story is much more complicated. Here is some of what we found:
- THE CITY spoke with four current and former members of a home care agency with collective bargaining agreements with HHWA — and not one knew they were a member of the union.
- The union’s executives amassed annual compensation packages as high as $1.4 million — all off of its members, many of whom, after dues deductions, earn less than the industry minimum wage.
- Its sister unions, sharing many officials with HHWA, have a history of cutting deals with bosses without many workers’ knowledge — a pattern that experts said is a sign the union serves largely as a tool for management.
HHWA president Joe Pecora defended the union’s record in response to THE CITY’s questions, saying in a statement that the union “is proud of the work it has done advocating for its members and being the leading voice for increased wages and benefits in Albany.”
He noted that the union’s recent growth “has largely been driven by member referrals which reflect our ability to meet their needs.”
Here’s what more to know from our investigation, which you can read in full here:
HHWA is circumventing union elections to fuel its massive growth — and members say they are none the wiser.
HHWA organizes hundreds and even thousands of workers at a time by coming to voluntary agreements with a home care company’s management.
Gathering support to join a union is a special challenge in the home care industry, where workers are siloed to patients’ homes and rarely have the opportunity to meet colleagues. Because employers typically want to keep unions out of their workplace, the vast majority of union petitions are not accepted by management and end up going through elections overseen by the U.S. labor board.
But a source familiar with HHWA’s organizing claims that it has gotten management of about three dozen companies to agree to accept the union without forcing an election.
Meanwhile, workers interviewed by THE CITY had no idea they were in a union. One said she was never asked to sign a union card during the period her home care agency voluntarily recognized the union.
“I never received a benefits packet and never met a union representative, ever, in five years working here,” she said in Spanish.
The family that controls the HHWA and its sister unions get paid enormous salaries.
The family that controls the HHWA, its parent union and its network of affiliates have amassed substantial compensation packages off of the dues paid by some of the lowest-paid workers in the city. Founding president Steven Elliott Sr., who died in 2023 after decades building the HHWA and its parent union, made $1.4 million in 2022. His daughter and son-in-law each earned about $500,000 in 2023.
Unions and the broader labor movement view them as a hostile force.
The Elliott family, the IUJAT and its family of unions are notorious within the labor movement for cutting in on other unions’ organizing drives and signing workers on to management-friendly contracts.
For example: At a Bronx trash hauling depot, management dissolved a Teamsters local and replaced it with an IUJAT local led by former mobsters, and workers saw their strict wage and benefit requirements vanish.
The union has direct ties to anti-regulation lobby efforts.
HHWA operates in close partnership with company management through the Home Healthcare Employers Association, a trade group founded by an attorney at Littler Mendelson, a firm that helps companies repel traditional labor union organizing drives.
Two years after the group’s inception, the employers’ association and HHWA simultaneously signed agreements with the same top lobbying firm. Their goal? To lean on the administration of then-governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature as Albany readied to expand regulation and oversight of the industry.
Read our full investigation here: New York’s Fastest-Growing Union Is Management’s Best Friend — and Some Workers Don’t Even Know They’re Members.
Want to speak to THE CITY about your workplace or union? Contact our labor reporter Claudia Irizarry Aponte at cirizarry@thecity.nyc.
