Natasha Forester laughs indulgently as her toddler plays with a bowl of water in their backyard in Meriden, Connecticut. “Rock,” the girl squeals, dunking a tiny stone that lands with a splash. More stones, and more squeals follow, dissolving mother and daughter into giggles.
Forester, 34, is a licensed practical nurse (LPN). She works a nightly job caring for dementia patients at a long-term care home.
“The whole reason I work nights is [to] be home with my two-year-old every day, so she does not need to be put in day care,” Forester says. “I'm exhausted, but just wouldn't have it any other way.”
The exhaustion comes from providing unpaid care by day and what she says is underpaid care by night.
“I am embarrassed to say it, but I would never put my own family member in my facility,” Forester recently told state lawmakers, while advocating a funding increase for nursing homes in the state budget.
“Understaffing, supply shortages, and overworked and underpaid staff have dramatically impacted the quality-of-care residents receive. With your help Connecticut can do what is right by residents and caregivers,” she said in her testimony.
An SEIU 1199 union member, Forester was planning to participate in a strike advocating for a pay increase from the Lamont administration. The strike was initially scheduled for May 19, but was later postponed to May 27.
Shortly before Memorial Day, a deal was reached with the state. The union says the contract will provide $164 million for nursing homes and $149 million for group homes.
How that will translate into wage increases for individual workers isn't immediately clear. Union members were specifically advocating for certified nurse aides (CNAs), who earn around $20 per hour, and were asking for a pathway to $30 an hour.
Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, said in a statement earlier in May that he met with the union leadership and agreed that the “current wages do not match the value of the service” provided by nursing home and group home workers. “I join them in their effort to seek an increase in their compensation,” he said.
‘I’ve been kicked, punched, pinched’
Caregiving is an especially tough job. As a result of their dementia, Forester’s elderly residents frequently resist care, but nursing homes are legally required to provide it.
“We can't let them sit in their stool or their urine,” she says.
“So we have to go in and get beaten up,” she says. “I've been kicked, punched, pinched, spit at. I've had feces thrown at me … Then they roll over and say, ‘OK, bye,” just like nothing happened.”
Forester’s parents are also LPNs – her father immigrated from Puerto Rico. Even though she aspired to become a registered nurse like her sister, Forester dropped out of nursing school. With three children and two full-time jobs, she says it was too much.
Working as a registered nurse would have paid more. As an LPN, Forester currently earns $36 dollars an hour for a 32-hour week, though she takes on additional hours. And being an RN would have given her a chance to climb higher on the work ladder.
“Because they are not registered nurses, or they are not the doctors and so on, they are at the lowest end of the occupational totem pole,” says Bandana Purkayastha, a sociologist and the associate dean of Social Sciences at the University of Connecticut.
“If you are seen as an unskilled worker then you are not going to make much money and it appears as a very neutral system,” Purkayastha says, adding that the work is actually high-skill. It’s the health care system that fails to value the emotional skill and labor involved in caregiving, she said.
Forester quit one of her two jobs recently, and the family took a financial hit. She had to stop the children’s after-school activities to save money, but they get by – her husband is a building contractor, she says.
‘I have to stay professional’
In Bloomfield, Johannah Alabi takes a walk around her garden, savoring its beauty. She’s not sure about the names of many flowers, having bought and planted many of them because “they were pretty.”
“I have a lot of daisies in here, roses on the side, black-eyed Susan,” she points out. “And that one there, it grows much, much taller than that, and it produced some yellow flowers. So I call it sunflowers, because that's what they look like to me, you know?”
It’s a rare day for her; she’s home in the afternoon.
As a certified nurse aide (CNA), Alabi holds a job among the lowest rung in health care. She says as a single mom with three kids, she couldn’t afford to study more. So at the age of 59, she has two full-time jobs at nursing homes in Hartford and Simsbury, caring for dementia patients. She says she is paid 20 dollars an hour.
Every day, she says she encounters sexual harassment and racial abuse.
“One resident said to me one day, ‘Oh, you are very pretty. Back in the days, you would be the house [N-word].’ When I go home, I'm like, ‘Oh my God,’ but when I'm at work, I have to stay focused, and I have to stay professional.
Alabi is an immigrant from Jamaica, working in an industry that disproportionately favors women and immigrant workers, according to the union SEIU II99 NE, of which she is a member.
Purkayastha, the UConn sociologist, says the industry favors those raised in cultures that expect empathy from women as family caregivers.
Being at the lowest end of this care work occupational rung is a reality, Purkayastha says, “but who decides how much money are these jobs worth? That’s where the exploitation begins.”
Alabi recalled a time in one of her previous jobs, where she says a resident with dementia mistook feces for chocolate.
“We were washing her because she was, bowel movement all over,” she says. “She's fighting, and she was trying to hit me. I jump away, and she hit the rail. And after I finished washing that resident, dress that resident, make that resident comfortable and clean, I was sent home for abuse.”
Alabi says the police investigated the incident and she was not charged. She says her employer asked her to come back, but by then, she had made a decision. She would never again work at a place that wasn’t unionized.
Today, her three children are grown. One has an MBA, another works at ESPN, and the third “my baby,” is a caterer, she says with pride.
But she’s still working those two jobs. A pay bump could let her drop one of them, she says, allowing her to enjoy the garden, and maybe even go on a date.
But caregiving, despite the emotional tolIs, is work she loves.
“Lot of people said, ‘Oh, Johannah, Target is paying way more than this, and we don't have to deal with the BS.’ I'm like, I'm not going anywhere … I'm going to fight for monies and stay here and take care of these people until God close their eyes, or my eyes.”
