It feels like day 500-something that we’re all still waiting for details of a new federal staffing mandate.
If you didn’t already have major anxiety over that looming threat, Axios this week offered a new cause for stress in this alarming headline: “Staffing standard could boost unionization efforts in nursing homes.”
State-level staffing ratios have been embraced by unions, with many reporting victories at the bargaining table since local laws were passed. With every worker lost now threatening a nursing home’s ability to comply with required levels, it makes sense to think that union-backed staff would feel empowered to demand higher pay and better benefits.
But could the rule truly lead to more efforts to unionize? That remains to be seen.
A federal mandate could easily continue the upward trajectory staff pay rates have been on for several years. My guess is, it will speed those increases in many places. Nursing homes will need big-dollar offers to recruit new workers to the sector, and to lure away those already working in higher-paying settings such as hospitals.
Those new benefits could make jobs more attractive, while more staff, if hired, could potentially make facilities even safer. Those issues might actually detract from efforts to organize if frontline staff feel cared for by their employers.
More likely, what stands to escalate is the war of words between unions and providers. Nursing homes remain in the middle of a drawn-out battle for the hearts and minds of the public. It’s one that has appeared to intensify as the pandemic has weakened its hold on the US.
Timed with its national meeting in DC last month, the American Health Care Association published an insert in the Washington Post to warn every reader about the threat of nursing home closures. And in a sure sign that nursing home quality is now a topic for the public to chew on, SEIU national had emblazoned the old granite sidewalks around Union Station — a major commuter hub — with big purple-and-yellow, pro-union stickers.
For the uninformed, the choice seems to be “save our seniors” and their access to care or “staff us.”
The truth, of course, is that there is need on both sides. Caregivers need more support, but not to the detriment of the seniors and others for whom they’re meant to care.
I, like most of you, no doubt, see the issue through the lens of well-intentioned providers being chronically, maybe grossly, underpaid by state and federal payers. SEIU national, the largest healthcare union in the US with more than 1.1 million members, couldn’t care less about all the nursing homes offering life-sustaining services and needed round-the-clock care.
And they’ll soon be joined by another major labor voice in working to tarnish nursing homes’ reputations: A source at the AFL-CIO in June told me that the national organization plans a publicity push after the staffing rule’s announcement.
AFL-CIO represents comparatively few nursing home employees through its affiliation with the Teamsters, but it sees an opportunity to drown the sector in negativity while making a big splash of its own.
As to whether another smear campaign will win unions more members, well, we’ll have to wait a little longer to find out if that sinks or swims.
Kimberly Marselas is senior editor of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
Opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News are not necessarily those of McKnight’s
