Service Charities Seek Ways to Help Their Lowest-Paid Employees Get By

Service Charities Seek Ways to Help Low-Paid Employees Get By 1

Catholic Charities is among the organizations that are making an effort to reach out to their lowest-paid workers, helping them gain access to assistance programs and tax credits.

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close Service Charities Seek Ways to Help Low-Paid Employees Get By 1

Catholic Charities is among the organizations that are making an effort to reach out to their lowest-paid workers, helping them gain access to assistance programs and tax credits.

As a certified nursing assistant at a nonprofit rehabilitation center in central Maine, Helen Hanson helps patients with basic activities healthy people take for granted­—eating, dressing, bathing, and going to the bathroom. Because the 46-year-old aide works second shift, she earns $10.80 an hour, a dollar more than the base pay for a nursing assistant at the center, and she often picks up extra hours on weekends when wages rise to $12 an hour.

Still, Ms. Hanson says that