By Rachel Bluth, Photo: Irfan Khan/The Los Angeles Times/Getty Images, California Healthline, October 20, 2022
A class of health care facility support staff, including nursing assistants, security guards, and janitors, has worked alongside doctors and nurses throughout the covid-19 pandemic keeping patients and medical buildings safe and clean. It’s an unassuming line of work that some people consider a calling.
Tony Ramirez, 39, a critical care technician at Garfield Medical Center in Monterey Park, California, finds more fulfillment in helping people in need than he once did editing technical documents for Disneyland. Before the pandemic, he would reposition and bathe patients and sometimes monitor their vital signs. After covid struck, he took on more duties, providing CPR or grabbing medications during an emergency, placing leads to monitor heart rhythms, and conducting post-mortem work. “We started doing that,” Ramirez said, “because of the influx of covid patients running very ill and in very intense situations.”
Through it all, his $19.40-an-hour pay hasn’t changed.
In Southern California, one labor union is trying to help by pushing for a $25 minimum wage at private hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and dialysis clinics. The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which represents roughly 100,000 health care workers in California, says a raise would help the providers retain workers who could land comparable positions at Amazon or fast-food restaurants amid labor shortages. It would also allow Ramirez to give up one of the three jobs he works just to make rent.
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