Kansas City area hospital workers want $15 minimum wage, better coronavirus safety
Tanyece Stephens works in food service at Research Medical Center, the department responsible for delivering meal trays throughout the hospital and returning them to the kitchen.
And though Stephens has a desk job as a unit secretary, “there are times when I have to deliver food trays to the nurses’ stations on COVID-19 floors because of short staffing,” she said.
On those trips, she’d rather have an N-95 respirator mask to protect her instead of the disposable blue surgical masks she says the hospital makes available to her and her food service co-workers.
“In fact, I contracted COVID-19 and had to be out of work for 14 days,” Stephens said during a press conference on Friday.
Stephens and other members of the Service Employees International Union are negotiating with Research and Menorah medical centers over issues related to their pandemic work conditions.
In their plan, the union members seek at least a $15 minimum wage, pandemic hazard pay and mandatory COVID-19 safety training for all employees who are at risk of coronavirus exposure, among several requests.
They point to the Saint Luke’s Health System, which last month increased its hourly wage to at least $15 for all hourly employees. Saint Luke’s said it was one of only a few employers in the Kansas City metro to offer that pay level.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, as it is in Kansas. Minimum wage in Missouri is $9.45.
The service employees union represents about 600 workers at Research and 250 to 300 at Menorah, union leaders said.
These are not nurses and doctors. HCA nurses, who are also unionized, have staged a handful of protests since the start of the pandemic to voice concerns about their own personal protective equipment and staffing shortages.
“The workers who make up our union are hospital and nursing home support staff that often go overlooked,” Lenny Jones, state director for SEIU Healthcare Missouri and Kansas, said Friday before bargaining resumed with HCA, which owns the two hospitals.
“They are the people who deliver patients their meals, who clean and sanitize patients’ rooms, assist patients and residents with their daily needs, monitor their symptoms and much more.”
During the pandemic, said Jones, “their jobs have become far more important and infinitely more dangerous.”
Protection of nurses and doctors grabs the media spotlight, he said, “and much, much less attention to what protections are being given to other essential workers, like dietary workers … like patient care technicians.
“A lot of times (they) are not visible in the media, and we want to put the plight of those workers front and center here.”
Jones said an estimated 200,000 health care workers nationwide, like Stephens, have contracted COVID-19, and more than 1,700 have died, “with people of color at especially high risk.”
“They’ve had to quarantine from their own families, and take unpaid time off from work,” said Jones. “As we near the ninth month of this global pandemic, Research and Menorah medical centers still do not have an adequate plan to keep workers safe from COVID-19.”
In a statement, HCA said that since the onset of the pandemic, the company has been “proud to stand with and protect our frontline colleagues as together we care for the members of our community.
“As we enter another bargaining session with the union, our resolve remains the same. Our goal is to secure a fair agreement with the union that continues to support a culture of colleague safety, care excellence and compassion.”
Ruqaiijah Yearby, a professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law who spoke on behalf of the union members, said the COVID-19 Exposure Control Plan plan they created is unique.
It’s “unlike anything that I have seen,” said Yearby, who also co-founded the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity at the university. “These workers are taking a hands-on approach to their safety in absence of adequate protocol to protect them against COVID-19.
“Without this adequate protection, the burden of safety has been placed on individual employees, instead of HCA, which has large resources …
“This burden is especially strong for people of color who often don’t have jobs with paid sick leave, or high enough wages to take significant time off to rest, heal or quarantine.”
HCA said that in addition to providing paid time off for employees who have COVID-19, the hospital system is “proud that at a time when many healthcare organizations laid off staff, we did not lay off or furlough any employees.”
The statement said employees who could not get their full hours or work in other facilities, were eligible for 70% of their base pay.
Dian Allen, whose job with environmental services at Menorah has her cleaning patient rooms, described herself as a 65-year-old woman with pre-existing health conditions that make her especially vulnerable to COVID-19, “and that frightens me,” she said. “I’ve seen co-workers like Tanyece fall ill to the virus.
“I love my job and I’m committed to giving the patients the care that they need. But my co-workers and I also want to feel safe and not sick and bring the virus home to our loved ones.”
HCA said that since March it has required masks for everyone in patient care areas — and different kinds of masks depending on the care given to COVID-19 patients — following guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jones said HCA rejected the $15 minimum wage proposal, and hazard pay request, during a previous bargaining session.
“Every single item that we proposed was rejected,” he said. “Today we will resubmit our proposal and continue to pressure the hospitals to do the right thing to protect employees. We cannot afford not to.”
The union also requests specific COVID-19 testing for employees and patients. The CDC has changed some of its earlier guidance for protecting health care workers, basing safety precautions now more on patient symptoms than test outcomes.
“Throughout this negotiation process, we expect the union to continue making demands that do not reflect the efforts we have made to provide a safe working environment,” HCA said in its statement. “We take our colleagues’ personal health and safety very seriously and we remain vigilant in doing so.
“We encourage the union to work with, not against, us during a time when the entire healthcare community should be coming together to protect and care for each other and our communities.”
This story was originally published December 4, 2020 at 4:05 PM.
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