Home care workers fight for higher minimum wage

Higher pay is now front and center for the home care industry.

In nationwide demonstrations starting Monday, health care aides are asking for a $15 minimum wage and the right to unionize. Demonstrations are planned for over 20 cities across the US in the next two weeks.

The demonstrations, inspired by similar fast food and retail employee protests, come on the heels of Wal-Mart’s (WMT) decision to raise wages of its lowest paid workers to well above the minimum rate.

Related: Wal-Mart changes the wage equation

Yahoo Finance’s Jeff Macke thinks the demands for higher home care wages make sense.

“If someone is taking care of your mom or dad, pay them a little more,” he says. “It’s a far more sympathetic industry… Much more core to what we aspire to be as a society.”

Macke adds that these protests are also part of a bigger picture.

“I think sectors will start to follow suit and I think wages are slowly going higher. We’ve been talking about this for years, and smart money is on a wage increase picking up steam,” he notes. “We have gotten to that critical mass. Maybe Wal-Mart (WMT) raising their minimum wage last week helped nudge some things loose.”

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However, Macke doesn’t believe the fight for unionization will be easy.

“They’re spread across so many different organizations that it’s going to be hard for them to come up with a union incentive.”

All in all higher wages will be a net positive for the economy, says Macke.

“2 million home care workers, 1.4 million Americans that work at Wal-Mart (WMT). That stuff starts to add up,” he points out. “People prefer to have a raise with inflation rather than have wages be flat with no inflation, which has been the case over the last few years… So this is a good sign, and it’s a healthy sign.”