Los Angeles, CA – Today, members of SEIU Local 2015, the nation’s largest long-term care union and California’s largest labor union representing more than 470,000 nursing home workers and home care providers, held a press conference at Paramount Plaza Rockport Healthcare Services Headquarters to demand that quality incentive payments—taxpayer funds—are used to attract and retain staff amid high turnover and unsafe staffing. Workers plan a two-day picket on August 7-8 across Vernon Healthcare Center and Centinela Skilled Nursing and Wellness Center (East and West).
Turnover is skyrocketing at Rockport/Brius facilities and workers report unsafe staffing levels and a high number of residents with serious mental illness that workers are not properly trained to care for. Workers at Vernon Healthcare Center and Centinela Skilled Nursing and Wellness Center (East and West) are ready to picket for their right to a safe, equitable workplace.
California’s Workforce & Quality Incentive Program (WQIP) offers state funding incentives to facilities that meet staffing standards and improve the quality of care for residents. These new incentives encourage nursing home operators to maintain safe staffing in their facilities. Safe staffing improves the quality of care for residents, healthcare outcomes, and working conditions for workers, which in turn helps to lower employee turnover.
Rockport/Brius is not using the WQIP quality incentive as intended. SEIU Local 2015’s proposal to management was simple: when the state gives nursing homes, the employer needs to use those taxpayer funds the way they were intended: to improve nursing home quality in our communities. Instead, Rockport/Brius management has come up with weak proposals to pay its staff minimal amounts and wants to exclude entire years of the program.
Nursing home workers will picket Rockport/Brius on August 7th and 8th and call on management to ensure WQIP payments benefit nursing home workers, helping to make these better jobs to attract and retain workers. Nursing home workers must receive guaranteed percentage shares every year of the WQIP funds.
Over the years, California’s health department has issued various citations to Brius facilities. And according to allegations made in one lawsuit, Brius keeps its facilities understaffed on purpose to maximize their profits. In other words, the vicious cycle of low staffing levels leading to burnout and high turnover leading to even lower staffing levels is manufactured
This picket takes place against the backdrop of a nursing home industry battered by the dual challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and workforce shortages, which existed long before the pandemic and has remained a challenge of the industry. This has resulted in alarming turnover rates among underpaid and underprotected care workers.
“The workers, not the bosses, are the backbone of the nursing home industry. If it wasn’t for us, there would be no functional nursing home. There would be no bedside care. We’re the ones who hold people’s hands when they take their last breath. We are the ones who soothe their souls and sit when they’re not visited on holidays. We have been overworked and underpaid for years. The ratio of patients to workers is 6 to 1, and we can’t give proper care when we’re THIS understaffed. We are unable to get things done in a timely manner when we’re understaffed. In turn, that makes us look bad because things are taking too long. We are hurting, we are being neglected, we have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, and this needs to change.” says CNA Lucia Tedford from Vernon Healthcare Center.
“The demand for care jobs in the U.S., including nursing homes, continues to grow at an exponential rate. This employer must recognize the urgent need to invest in these facilities and attract the urgently needed workers. This is also a justice issue…it’s not lost on us that a majority of nursing home workers are Black women, Indigenous women, women of color, and immigrants, and too many of these essential workers struggle with low wages and inadequate benefits.” said SEIU 2015 President Arnulfo De La Cruz. To learn more about SEIU Local 2015 visit www.SEIU2015.org or on social media @SEIU2015.