New York’s Safety Net Workers Push for a Bigger Bump in Contracts

Legislators estimate that at least 14 programs encompassing thousands of workers aren’t included in the annual contract increases.

Even when nonprofits are eligible for the annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), the increases have often failed to cover inflation. That’s if the nonprofits receive the annual increases at all; under Governor Andrew Cuomo, the adjustments were routinely bypassed in the name of fiscal austerity.

The increases are typically hashed out during the state’s annual budget negotiations, an opaque process that happens almost entirely behind closed doors in Albany. This year, Governor Kathy Hochul proposed a 1.7 percent “Targeted Inflationary Increase” for eligible social service providers but did not specify how much of that bump would go directly toward salaries.

The Senate and Assembly both proposed a 4 percent increase, though the specifics vary. The Senate wants to expand which contracts are included and earmarked 1.3 percent specifically for increasing worker salaries, whereas the Assembly did not call for an expansion and wants 2.3 percent to go toward salaries.

Workers, meanwhile, called for a 2.7 percent increase that matches actual inflation tracked by the Consumer Price Index over the past year. They also want all programs to be included.

“We’re so far behind,” said Michelle Jackson, executive director of the Human Services Council, which represents over 170 organizations that provide services ranging from housing access to mental health counseling.

For Jackson, that’s especially unfair, given what these workers provide. “Over 800,000 human service workers do lifesaving work every day. They’re overwhelmingly people of color and they’re underpaid for their work because of the government.”

Over 70 percent of the state’s human service workers are women and over 50 percent are women of color.

Senator Roxanne Persaud, who is sponsoring legislation to broaden the categories of included workers for the COLA, hopes it will help bring more equitable wages to a historically neglected workforce. “We’ve been escalating this for over three years now,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “While there is significant nuance to this discussion, it simply does not make sense that some programs are favored over others.”

The requirement for a human service COLA has existed in some form since 2006, but the increases aren’t guaranteed. Just one increase happened during Cuomo’s 11-year tenure, amounting to less than a tenth of a percent — a COLA bump so miniscule that Jackson jokingly refers to it as “Coke Zero.”

The drought ended with Hochul, who has provided some increase for the workforce every year since her first budget in 2022. But her proposals have typically amounted to around half of what workers demand. Last year’s budget delivered a modest 2.6 percent increase — far below the 7.8 percent demanded by worker groups and backed by both chambers of the state legislature to combat historic inflation.

Jackson said the minor increases have not been enough to reverse a decade of disinvestment by the state that has worsened workforce turnover and perpetuated high vacancy rates. “I don’t want to say, ‘It’s too little too late,’ but it’s not enough given the current climate,” Jackson said. “She’s calling this her affordability budget and she’s not even paying her own bills.”

Neither the governor nor the state’s budget office responded to requests for comment.

The state’s spotty approach means that nonprofits like University Settlement have had to scrape together funding from other sources to try to retain workers or keep them on even footing. To cover annual cost-of-living raises for state-contracted workers like Bleary, the organization has had to fundraise private money.

“New York is not paying the true cost of the homelessness prevention programs it wants to exist,” said Jennifer Vallone, associate executive director for arts, adults, and advocacy at University Settlement. “When we raise private money, we actually aren’t free to use it in the most flexible or strategic way to truly benefit the communities we serve — we need to dedicate it to subsidizing this work that New York State says it wants to happen.”

United Neighborhood Houses, which represents a coalition of human service organizations including University Settlement, estimates it would cost the state $10 million more to cover excluded workers under Hochul’s 1.7 percent proposal, or $15 million more at the 2.7 percent rate the industry is calling for.