SAGINAW, MI — Some people might call Catherine Davis a hero.
Lately, though, the 60-year-old said she has struggled to feel like one.
Throughout the deadliest stretches of the pandemic, the support staff member at Hoyt Nursing and Rehab Centre in Saginaw exposed herself daily to residents there suffering — and dying — from the COVID-19 virus. Her work included tasks as simple as folding laundry for the senior citizens there, and yet “a good day” sometimes involved simply surviving a disease that has killed more than 700,000 Americans.
“We all took chances on our lives, and we all went home scared that we were taking chances on our family’s lives,” Davis said of her and other support staff members at facilities across the nation. “The nurses and aids all worked hard together. We all need to be treated as heroes.”
Davis will join her co-workers and support staff peers from other Saginaw nursing homes in asking for city-funded “hero pay” during the Saginaw City Council meeting Monday, Oct. 11, at 6:30 p.m. at Saginaw City Hall, 1315 S. Washington.
Organized by the SEIU Healthcare Michigan labor union that represents 17,000 health care workers in the state, the nursing home employees plan to pitch their case during the public comment section of the gathering.
The reasoning behind their united front at Saginaw City Hall: Michigan lawmakers last month approved a state budget that did not include support staff in a pandemic-related pay raise provided to nurses and certified nursing assistants working in the same dangerous environments. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a state budget buoyed by $2.7 billion in federal COVID-19 funding that, in part, supported a $2.35-per-hour pay raise for direct care workers.
With Saginaw City Council members holding the purse strings on its own chunk of federal COVID-19 aid — $52 million in American Rescue Plan Act stimulus funding, to be precise — Davis and her colleagues hope local elected representatives will reward nursing home support staff in a manner state leaders did not.
Members of the support staff group did not indicate the amount of money they hope to receive.
Saginaw City Council members last month hosted the first in a series of public strategy sessions they said will help them decide how to spend the stimulus before it expires in 2026. While the council did not address nursing home support staff-related ideas specifically, that initial gathering generated ideas including providing relief for health care workers.
Nicole Flores, a housekeeper who also works at Hoyt Nursing and Rehab Centre, hoped the council singles out her and her peers for a piece of the pandemic relief fund.
“We are essential, and we deserve a raise,” Flores said. “Saginaw City Council has the opportunity to be a leader and show the rest of the state how we should value and support essential workers.”
Nursing homes were particularly dangerous environments about this time last year. With older populations at high risk of death from the pandemic, nursing homes suffered substantial losses prior to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout that began in December 2020.
Deaths extended to staff members caring for residents at those sites.
A statewide database shows, at long term care facilities across Michigan, there were 80 deaths among staff members; 69 of those deaths happened before March 2021.
There were 25,397 COVID-19 cases reported among staff members at those same sites, including 70 cases reported at Hoyt Nursing and Rehab Centre.
“Support staff like me have worked throughout this pandemic because we knew our residents needed us,” Flores said.
“We risked our lives going into COVID rooms, cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, answering patient call lights. We did whatever was needed. That’s why it was so upsetting to hear that, when the state renewed a pandemic pay raise for direct care providers in nursing homes, they did not include support staff like me.”
While daily COVID-19 cases are down substantially compared to the pre-vaccine environment, numbers at long term care facilities statewide are on the rise again in recent weeks after a relatively mild summer. For instance, during a 7-day period in June 2021, there were two nursing home staff COVID-19 cases reported statewide compared to 352 cases reported during the week spanning Sept. 29 to Oct. 6.
Because the pandemic remains dangerous, frontline workers continue to deserve added financial reimbursement for that risk, Davis said.
“We are out there doing what we have to do to make things work,” she said.
“Everybody who has worked through the pandemic deserves something extra. If you want to call us heroes, we need to be treated as heroes.”
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