Crisis of care at nursing homes leads staff to call for action
There are times when her shift is so busy and the facility is so understaffed that it takes Liz Diaz two hours to get a resident of the West Haven nursing home where she works a drink, she said.
“There are more falls,” said Diaz, a certified nurses assistant at Apple Rehab in West Haven. “People aren’t getting proper care. Everyone is very busy. We doing one task after another. It’s so fast-paced that there is no time to spend with residents — and that I really don’t like.”
Diaz was among hundreds of nursing home workers throughout the state and country who picketed outside their place of work Wednesday afternoon to demand raises, better benefits and more protections for residents during a national Day of Action to launch a country-wide campaign to demand industry change.
The pandemic highlighted the gaps in care that nursing homes have been struggling with for years, said officials with the New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199, SEIU and the parent SEIU union which encompasses organizations throughout the country and in Puerto Rico.
“The status quo in our nursing homes is not working — not for workers, residents, or for families,” said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry in a statement. “As the nation looks to move past COVID-19, nursing home workers and residents are facing a system on the brink of collapse.”
Black and brown women make up the majority of nursing home staff who have kept caring for residents even as the industry is struggling, Henry said. “That’s why workers are taking action now across the country to demand nursing home workers be respected, protected and paid living wages,” Henry added.
The New England Health Care Employees Union was able to negotiate raises, cheaper health care premiums and pension benefits for employees of about 60 nursing homes throughout Connecticut with the help of state funding, said union spokesman Pedro Zayas.
But the three Apple Rehab nursing homes in West Haven, Rocky Hill and Uncasville, that are represented by the union haven’t sought state funding, Zayas said. That means health care and pension benefits for workers at those homes weren’t enacted in the same way as other homes that sought and obtained state funding, Zayas said.
“We are very happy that Connecticut made some significant steps to improve these jobs,” Zayas said. “But it’s unfortunate that we still have operators who refuse to do the right thing for these workers.”
Executives at the Apple Rehab corporate offices did not return phone calls and emails Wednesday.
Diaz and Stephanie Booth, a license practical nurse at Apple Rehab in Uncasville, face challenges every day due to a lack of staff at their facilities, both women said. “We’re doing the work of five people,” Booth said.
“We’re looking for increased wages because we have a severe staffing crisis,” Booth said. “We can’t get anyone in the door because of the pay.”
On some days, there are no aides, Booth said. On others, there are a few but not enough to manage 80 residents, she said. “We have people who start and leave in the middle of the first day because of the workload,” Booth said. “We also have people who don’t come back after the first day. We need to be competitive with other facilities.”
The pandemic has led to staffing shortages that are impacting the care of residents, Diaz said. Her facility lost a lot of residents to COVID-19, “which was heartbreaking,” she said.
But following months of working through the pandemic, staffing is so critically low that there are evenings when only two or sometimes one employee is working to care for 50 residents, Diaz said. “I didn’t get into this business to see this kind of thing,” she said. “I became an aide to help these people.”