Leader Profile: Keshia Williams, Nursing Home CNA, Testifies to PA Women’s Health Caucus About Solving Our Short-Staffing Crisis

(January 21st, 2021) – Keshia Williams, a CNA at the Meadows at Scranton, PA, and long time leader and executive board member of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, testified to the Women’s Health Caucus’ virtual roundtable Chaired by State Rep. Mary Jo Daley (District 148, serving Montgomery County).

The theme of the roundtable event was, “Long Term Care: A Moment of Crisis & Opportunity.” 

Ms. Williams gave an incredibly strong and persuasive argument and a first-hand account of how poverty-level wages are fueling the nursing home industry’s catastrophic short-staffing crisis and how women of color – who comprised a significant part of the caregiving workforce – are disrespected and taken advantage of — urgent issues that must be forcefully address.

See Keshia Williams’ remarks in full below. 

I’m Keshia Williams, and I have been a Certified Nursing Assistant since 2012. I currently work at a nursing home in Scranton. 

I want to thank you for having me here today to testify and share my experiences as a frontline caregiver in Pennsylvania nursing homes, and discuss how low wages affect staffing, our profession, and resident care.  

And frankly, why the healthcare workforce continues to pay poverty wages is because our workforce is composed primarily of women, and women of color. 

Imagine rushing from room to room to bathe, clothe, feed, and toilet 15-20 people or more; many of whom cannot do anything for themselves. They rely on you for everything – and you have to do everything for all of them in just a few hours.

Now imagine in those few hours you are also their only social and emotional support system, and you grow to love them like family. And you mourn when they pass.

This work has always been — and will always be — one of the hardest jobs physically, emotionally, and mentally. Now add a pandemic. 

Your residents are terrified and confused. They don’t know why their families aren’t visiting. 

They get sick. They are dying. 

You are terrified because you don’t want to get sick or get your family sick. You stay away from your own family, or send your kids away to stay at relative’s houses.

Now imagine that you are expected to do this for $11 an hour. You can make more down the street at a convenience store. And many of your coworkers start to do exactly that.

For years we’ve been saying “we are in a staffing crisis.” I don’t think ‘crisis’ begins to cover it anymore.

Caregivers are leaving the bedside with very good reason. 

We need to fix this broken system. Raising wages for essential workers is THE KEY solution. 

We must end the catastrophic short staffing crisis. 

And that means paying all caregivers a livable wage that gives workers a reason to work in nursing homes and long term facilities and remain in the workforce for the long term. 

Having just 2.7 hours of bedside care is immoral. Our residents deserve better – which is why me and our workers are demanding to raise standards across the entire industry and calling for higher staffing ratios so that we can provide 4.0 hours of quality care. 

All these issues are inter-connected. 

Better and living wages will impact short-staffing along with other vital reforms. 

We cannot do this work if we need to work 3 jobs to make ends meet. Or work so hard and be so exhausted yet still need to wait in line at a food bank to feed your children. 

We are professionals and deserve and demand to be treated and respected as such. 

We can, in fact, solve multiple problems at once if we simply exercise the right leadership, adopt forward-thinking policies, and show courage and political will that we’re willing to change our long term system. 

Those four solutions include: 

1–We must mandate 4.0 of bedside care for all residents – this is a matter of life and death for those whom we care for. 

2–We must add more staff to the bedside, because higher staffing ratios on paper mean nothing unless we add more workers who are trained and can do the caregiving work across all departments and job titles. 

3–We must have fair and living wages for our workers to show that we are respected and treated with dignity based on our dedication, immense sacrifice, and back-breaking work. 

4–All essential healthcare workers must have the right to join a Union to have our voices heard, to hold owners, managers, and political leaders accountable, and be able to advocate and reform our long term care system.   

Bottomline, poverty nursing home jobs hurt women, because it keeps us stuck in a cycle of poverty.

If we raise wages in nursing homes, we will improve staffing, improve resident care, and improve the lives of thousands of women and their families by giving them the resources they need to build better lives.

Thank you.