By Linda Carter-Brooks, CNA
Taking care of people as a home care worker has been a calling for me for almost 30 years, but since the COVID-19 pandemic started, I feel like I have to make potentially life and death choices every day.
I started working as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) in the early 1990s, caring for people in nursing facilities and in their homes. For the last four years, I have cared for my mother-in-law in our home. This allows me to ensure she gets the best care possible, but it pays so little that I have to work a second job delivering meals across Milwaukee despite the high risk of exposure to COVID-19.
Home care workers are on the front lines helping to protect seniors and people with disabilities and enabling them to live with dignity at home.
But instead of dignity on the job, I worry constantly because low wages and lack of benefits don’t allow me to protect my family’s physical and financial well-being. Now as coronavirus cases are spiking again in Wisconsin, I take every precaution but I have no choice but to go to my second job. It’s either risk the virus or risk my mortgage payment.
As a Black woman working in a job that is predominantly held by women of color, I have seen my industry and my community hit hard by this virus — we’ve lost clients, co-workers and our own loved ones. But home care workers like me have always struggled to survive. I am paid $12/hr for a four-and-a-half hour work day. In reality, my day starts at 4 am preparing medications and doesn’t end until 9 pm when my mother-in-law is in bed. I have no benefits like employer-paid health coverage or paid sick leave. After two years without healthcare I was able to get a low-cost plan under the Affordable Care Act but I worry what will happen if I get a serious case of COVID or any other major illness.
For home care workers and for families like mine in desperate need of support, the situation feels dire.
I’m experiencing both sides of it. The long-term care system is overstretched and underfunded and too many families can’t find the care they need. COVID has only increased the need for skilled care but the work is underpaid, forcing many home care workers like me to find additional work that only exposes us to the virus more.
In the last four years, President Trump has done nothing to help the home care crisis and his handling of COVID has been a disaster for essential workers. He failed to ensure PPE got to frontline workers, the financial stimulus for everyday people has run dry, and the pandemic is only getting worse in so much of our nation, Wisconsin especially.
On the other hand, Joe Biden supports working Americans in a way Trump never has. He understands we need to invest in home care as the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing population of seniors adds to the demand. The population aged 65 and over in the U.S. will skyrocket to 88.5 million by 2050 — that’s our parents and grandparents (and also me and many of you reading this statistic right now).
It’s time we recognize home care workers are essential to our economy, our healthcare system and our communities. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the first presidential ticket to do that.
They plan to add 1.5 million new home and community-based care jobs, raise wages so all home care workers can live with dignity; address the need for basic benefits like affordable healthcare and paid family and sick leave; and ensure all home care workers have the choice to join a union and have a voice in their profession.
This plan is good for workers and it’s good for the millions of elderly and disabled Americans and their families who need home care today as we face the coronavirus or in the future.
On Election Day, we have a chance to make real change. I’ll be voting to beat this virus, protect our families and our elders and support working people. That’s why Biden and Harris will get my vote.
Leave a Reply