Shantonia Jackson

Based on “What’s Actually Going on in Our Nursing Homes” by Gabriel Winant
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/whats-actually-going-on-in-our-nursing-homes-an-interview-with-shantonia-jackson/

Shantonia Jackson, is a certified nursing assistant (CNA) in Chicago. She works at City View MultiCare Center in Cicero, Illinois. City View was the site of a major COVID-19 outbreak. Hundreds of residents and employees contracted the virus; many died.

Before COVID, Shantonia Jackson and her co-worker had 35 residents each to care for. In fall 2020, she had 70 men and was the only CNA to care for them.

“Management never came upstairs on the floor with me to see what I was dealing with. They would come upstairs and yell at me, “Well, you need to give a shower.” I already gave thirty showers out of seventy people. I can’t make sure seventy take a shower. Because I’ve got to still pass trays. I’ve got to still make beds. It’s hard.”

“According to the Department of Public Health, we were supposed to have 2.5 hours of care for each resident. If I have seventy residents, how could I do that? You can’t. It’s impossible. But the government gives nursing homes money if they say they don’t have enough staff. They give them extra money to hire more staff, but they steadily cut the staff. So the elderly are not getting their proper care; that’s how they get bedsores, that’s how they get dehydrated. Some of the residents don’t eat, because we don’t have enough CNAs to feed them.” 

“My vision would be to make sure that every CNA had at most only five residents. I would make sure it would be properly staffed. And that way we can comb their hair, brush their teeth, lotion their body, change them every two hours, make sure they get their needs, so we can do what we were put there to do, when their family members couldn’t do it. The residents would get proper food. That’s a grandma! That’s a grandpa! And someday, you’re going to be a grandma, and you’re going to be a grandpa. And you’re going to want somebody to sit down and hear you say, “Well, my daughter never calls. She never comes and sees me.” And I could say, “But I’m your daughter! I come and see you! I love you!” To make her day special every single day, up until the day she dies.”

Carol Jones

Based on Remembering Carol Jones on Labor Day (1948 – 2022)

https://seiuhcpa.org/caroljones/

Carol Jones grew up in a family of Black coal miners and domestic workers in western Pennsylvania. She worked in a laundry, as a dishwasher and in food preparation. In 1976 she found work at the Mariana #58 Bethlehem Steel coal mine. She joined the United Mine Workers of America. She became a union force for good at work. She welcomed women miners, served on the safety committee, and campaigned for the Family Medical Leave Act. 

When the mine closed, she was making $132 a day. In the 1980’s, home health care workers were making $1 an hour. (interview by Elizabeth Moore, March 3, 2022) 

When Carol Jones became a caregiver, she encountered poverty level wages. She played a decisive role in forming a union with SEIU Healthcare Pennsyllvania at TRIPL homecare agency. A union organizer, she was part of the breakthrough of 2015 when 20,000 homecare workers across Pennsylvania won union representation. She returned to work at TRIPL until her retirement.

Carol Jones received care at the Grove of Washington, a unionized nursing home. When the workers there joined in a statewide strike against unfair labor practices and low wages, Carol visited the union member picketers in a rolling bed. SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania members accompanied her body with union banners hanging low in a gesture of solidarity and love.