Healthcare workers, all workers, deserve a major pay increase
By: Gregory Harper
Tags: Workers Rights, American Dream, Wages, Labor, Living Wage

You save workers by demanding they be fairly compensated for their labor, not by trying to spin the narrative that other people making a living wage is what’s hurting them. That’s doing just the opposite of helping them. It’s actively working to wipe out support for the only leverage they have, access to competitive pay outside of their current jobs. Healthcare workers were being shafted long before Taco Bell workers started being paid fairly.

CNAs (some of the most underpaid workers in the healthcare system) and other healthcare workers are out there taking care of sick people, pandemic or not. It’s not a hard narrative to grasp or relay that they should be making more money. Not just enough money to pay the bills and put food on the table but enough money that they can actually imagine being able to save for their future, enough to buy the things or experiences they deserve the ability to acquire as reward for their labor and for their dedication to a career that requires them to go above and beyond every single day to care for the sick and vulnerable. They deserve a wage worthy of motivation to continue this work, day after day.

Workers haven’t had any real bargaining power for decades unless you happen to be a union worker, and even those workers’ ability to organize and bargain for fair compensation has came under attack in a major way [especially so] in the last decade with union busting laws the likes of ‘right to work’ in states like Indiana, where lawmakers have been eager to shuffle through the legislation.

This pandemic has created a shortage in a couple of ways. Workers getting sick and the government trying to curb spread. That has led to labor shortages at places like Taco Bell (pictured above) and so on. These employers have all had to do something they never thought they’d do, raise wages in order to fill up their staff. The FB post pictured above highlights an important issue, the current competition that the healthcare and other industries are seeing as they [continue to] pay their employees poverty wages even when faced with those employees having access to a better wage outside of their respective industries.

Taco Bell (any many other service industry employers) employees making a living wage is super important in the fight for a fair wage in the healthcare industry and beyond.

Healthcare and other employers will have to start considering competitive pay in the wake of their employees being lured away by higher paying jobs or they will continue to struggle to fill their labor needs. Couple that with public pressure and support for better wages, their choices are limited.

This needs to be hammered over and over into the minds of the general public in order to grow favorable public sentiment, the belief that healthcare workers deserve higher pay, and the support that will follow. That’s not going to be a difficult narrative for the public to get behind.

It’s important to note, you do not want this to turn into an “us against them” campaign. As in “healthcare workers deserve the pay they’re fighting for but “burger flippers” do not”. The main reason for this, other than the fact that everyone deserves a living wage, is that if public sentiment shifts towards that narrative, then the enemy to defeat becomes the Taco Bell employees (etc.) that are earning a better wage that “they do not deserve”. This then bolsters those employers’ own quest to attempt to claw back employees’ pay gains allowing them to play on the image of having the public support to do it. If that happens, healthcare workers, all workers, will lose the only real leverage they have in this fight for fair pay.

If they don’t have any better paying job opportunities they can leave their current roles for, or if they aren’t able to already be working in other better paying jobs because those jobs no longer exist and/or aren’t any longer available, then when [or more likely if] they see any sort of gain in pay, even in a successful and publicly backed demand for a living wage, they will not be getting the above living wage rate they deserve. They’d be lucky to end up with a wage that covers the bare minimum at that point, i.e, the Taco Bell wage range of around $14 per hour.

So yes, there is a real need to highlight why healthcare workers should be paid more, but we need to also be bringing positive awareness to the fact that other industries have raised their standards, and that the healthcare industry should start compensating their employees for the level of work that is expected of them. Doing this without taking focus off of the real enemy, the employers, their corporations and the shareholders that allow worker exploitation.

The theft of ones’ labor is the enemy, not your neighbor that has secured a better wage. Workers need to build solidarity among one another, especially in the service industry, which honestly covers most of the work available in this country.

Profits are higher than ever. This is a direct result of increased worker productivity and the fact that those workers haven’t been given a share of the profit resulting from that rise in productivity. It has instead funneled into higher executive pay and larger payouts to shareholders. All while the cost of goods and living have continually and dramatically increased.

Corporate tax rates have also plummeted at the same time, leaving less resources for strapped American workers struggling to make ends meet and contributing to an overall decline in the greatness and ability of our country to do great things. Our roads are falling apart, our infrastructure overall is crumbling and so old and outdated it’s embarrassing. We are one of the most overworked and unhappy nations in the developed world. Our health outlooks and our actual life expectancy is in decline. We are taxed largely and unequally without proper representation. All of the real money is flowing to these employers who don’t want to pay American workers a proper wage and also don’t want to pay a dime in tax on any of it to support the infrastructure that moves their employees, their goods and their customers around and helps protect the overall health of this nation.

The fact of the matter is, almost no one is being compensated fairly for their labor in this country. People fought and died here for worker’s rights and proper compensation which paved the way for the reality of and the drive and motivation to achieve the American Dream.

That Dream being the promise that if you worked hard that you could provide for yourself and your family, own a car and a home, be able to afford to pay for vacations and experiences, to be able to save for your future and see your children live lives richer and happier and better off than their parents. That this was possible with a one person income, leaving the opportunity, that if desired, enabled someone in a two person household to spend their labor on things that would enrich the household in non monetary ways.

The American Dream was the promise that your friends and family and neighbors would have a good life and not continually struggle to make ends meet. It was the promise that that you could go to your job and share your labor but still be able to come home with enough time and energy to allow you to be of service to and within your community. The American Dream was never about this belief in rugged individualism that has managed to pit worker against worker. This propagandized theory is the very recipe that has led us to the place we now find ourselves in, the land of opportunity for only some. The upward class mobility and increased productivity that was driven by this Dream worked for America for decades, until the 80’s rolled around and every bit of what was fought so hard for started being systemically dismantled, one change after the other until the American Dream was effectively snuffed out leaving the promise held by generations of Americans before us as largely nothing more than a pipe dream.

That promise was able to be wrangled away from us through the age old strategy of allowing ourselves to be divided and concurred. If we ever hope to change anything we need to find a way to unite, even if only in the realm of working together to advance common goals.

This is the biggest opportunity for the advancement of fair compensation many of us have ever seen. We need to look for, recognize and actively squash attempts by these robber barons, and unfortunately the people who seem so determined to help them advance their goals, or this chance for something better, for ourselves and for those who come after us, will be gone.