unions

The assisted living facilities around here still suck pretty hardcore, I picked up at a couple when doing agency as a CNA2. I made agency $ doing that but talking to the girls working there as staff, they made dogshit $ and were from other countries who didn’t have the certs to get the better paying jobs yet and were obviously being exploited due to their ignorance (of which I happily provided the information they were being denied by the employers).

CNAs working skilled/LTC facilities are almost all unionised with SEIU which comes with its political bs but pays considerably well for those jobs—on an experience scale, but I was making just under $29 as staff with decent enough heath insurance through the Essential Worker Trust Fund, paid for through union dues primarily. But you still have to deal with all the crap that comes from working in those shitholes with stupidass ratios and patients presenting with even more extreme behavioural issues.

Now I work for Providence which is miles ahead for employees regarding safe working conditions and ratios vs nursing homes, and pay is comparable with a wider range of benefits without excessive restrictions (i.e., don’t have to wait a year before qualifying for education benefits, 100% employer paid education, health insurance, etc).

Most employers have strict no tolerance policies against bullying and discrimination, focus on DEI has been expanding at break-neck speed for better or worse, lots of focus on union organising, and (at least in my industry of healthcare) lax policies around self-expression and encouragement to be one’s authentic self. I don’t know all the details at the moment but there’s been plenty of legislation on anti-discriminatory measures on the state level.

So I guess it has gotten better overall in the last decade or so on those topics, but the cost of living is still pretty high so healthcare especially has to pay out higher wages or else lose us all and then have the weight of the healthcare authority come down on them.