Springhill Care Group Labor Group fights for better pay for Home Care Workers Americans live longer base from the statistics, thus making the population age and as it ages the need for home care workers will grow significantly. According to the Bureau of Labor Standards, the Home Care Workforce will grow from 1.7 Million to 2.6 million in 2018, but the people caring for seniors in their homes earn on average less than 10 dollars an hour and many do not get benefits. A number of those workers assembled at the Food and Medicine Headquarters in Brewer Thursday to encourage their Senators to make it a priority to improve pay, benefits and training for this growing workforce. Helen Hanson stood at a podium from her huddling under the tent and shared her financial struggles during her work as a home care worker. "My bills are paid but when the oil tank is down do I pay the mortgage or do I spend 350 dollars to put 100 gallons in the oil tank," she said. Although Hanson loves going into peoples' homes to care for them she couldn't make the ends meet. So instead, she went to work at a rehab facility as a certified nurse and she got better pay and benefits. This kind of problem is one example of a nationwide concern. "We have 3 million direct care health workers in the country right now and we're projecting 27 million seniors by 2050," Pointed out Reverend Mark Doty, one of those gathered at the Food and Medicine Rally. The pro workers group had a stage demonstration where they showed how hard their work is. The demonstration is even complete with a juggler to show how complicated it is for home care workers to juggle their responsibilities. Everything is happening while caring for a growing number of seniors and finding an easy solution may be a juggling act too. The issue becomes how to pay for a better wage for them after all agree that home care workers should be paid well. Source: http://news.springhillcaregroup.net/2013/05/14/labor-gr

Springhill Home Care Group Korea Reviews Seoul Employs Elderly to Tackle Phone Waste http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/07/25/seoul-employs-elderly-to-tackle-phone-waste/ South Koreans are among the world's most frequent phone upgraders, buying about 15 million new mobile phones each year, according to a recent report by market research firm DigiEco. One of the problems that creates is the handling of all the discarded older phones. To tackle the issue of electronics waste, or e-waste, the Seoul city government started a program called Eco City in 2009 to collect used electronics. It runs a waste handling facility called Seoul Resource Center in the northeast of the capital and employs elderly or low-income people to break them down and process the parts. Eco City is unique in that it is an entirely government-funded and directed operation. In Tokyo, the municipal government invited private companies to set up recycling facilities, while China has struggled to deal with large amounts of e-waste both produced domestically and imported. Seoul's Eco City says each discarded mobile phone has between 2,500 won and 4,000 won (about US$2.23-$3.50) worth of metals in it, including rare earth metals such as neodymium. At intervals of six months or a year, companies can bid to purchase the waste that has been gathered and sorted by Eco City. Whatever can't be sold or reused is incinerated. http://springhillcaregroup.net/ http://news.springhillcaregroup.net/