Everett, Wash. ? Mike Hardy takes stock of the wardrobe he’s picked out for his mother-in-law: purple blouse and socks, white slacks and sneakers, matching earrings.

At 88, Ruby Ento suffers from diabetes and Alzheimer’s, which means her 68-year-old son-in-law and 61-year-old daughter Nellie must follow an exhaustive daily routine that includes cooking, cleaning, changing adult diapers and catheter bags, and giving her insulin shots.

Mike Hardy plants a kiss on his 88-year-old mother, Ruby Ento, left, in their Everett, Wash., apartment. Hardy has been taking care of his ailing mother for 15 years. Faced with declining home care funding and rising medical costs Hardy and other families faced with the same problems are trying to start a home care union.

This isn’t how they imagined their retirement, but they don’t seem to mind. Coordinating her wardrobe is just one of those little tasks that let Ruby know how much they love her and want her at home with them. It often means waking at 3 a.m. to calm Ruby after a nightmare or rub her belly when she’s constipated.

“She gets tender, loving care,” Hardy said.

But he and other home health care workers said the state wasn’t taking good care of them. This summer they had enough and let the state know it.

Washington’s home care workers voted overwhelmingly to join the Service Employees International Union, which they hoped would negotiate for them more than the $7.68 an hour, with no benefits, that the state offers. With that decision, they followed their peers in Oregon and California who unionized in search of better wages, benefits and respect.

“There’s so many people out there doing this home care and not getting properly compensated,” Hardy says.

Hope for a living wage

Hardy was among 84 percent of Washington home care workers who supported the call to unionize in what is being hailed as Washington’s largest public union vote ever. As a result, the union will begin negotiating a contract with the state on behalf of nearly 26,000 home care workers.

Three years ago, 74,000 home health workers in Los Angeles County voted to join SEIU, one of the largest organizing victories since the 1930 union drives at auto plants, said Paul Clark, professor of labor studies and industrial relations at Penn State University.

Home care workers in Oregon voted to unionize recently and continue to negotiate a contract.

Not everybody’s answer

Not every home care worker believes the union is the answer, though.

Julie Giorgetti of Renton cares for her severely disabled 23-year-old daughter. She’s paid by Medicaid, a joint federal and state program, at a rate she once calculated to be about 30 cents an hour. Like most home care workers, she’s not in it for the money.

“It’s not a job, it’s a way for me to keep my daughter at home,” she said. As a parent, “This is just what you do.”

She said it didn’t make sense for her to join a union and pay dues SEIU Local 6 members pay 1.8 percent of their gross income in dues.

“Of course I want them to have respect and what they need,” she said of the home care workers. “We can join all the unions we want, but where is the money coming from?”

That’s a good question. Unionization doesn’t guarantee better pay, especially not with the budget problems most states have.

Home care workers in Washington state act as independent contractors they’re hired by elderly or disabled clients, and paid by the state, with little oversight. Last year the Legislature passed a 25-cent hourly raise for them, but it was vetoed by Gov. Gary Locke when he had to cut the Legislature’s unbalanced budget.

Voters passed an initiative last year, allowing home health workers to unionize and creating the Home Care Quality Authority to act as the employer for purposes of negotiation.

The nine members of the authority’s board sympathize with home-care workers and will probably agree on better pay and benefits, said chairman Charley Reed, former head of Aging and Adult Services for Washington state.

But the Legislature has final say over the wages and benefits package, and that’s where the real battle will begin. The state had a $1.6 billion budget hole this year, and next year is expected to be worse.

“The question is, how can we afford to pay more?” Reed said.