Approximately 2,000 Illinois nursing home employees are protesting at 50 of the State of Illinois’ long term care nursing homes. The workers are hoping to affect ongoing negotiations between nursing home owners and the Service Employees International Union who is helping to negotiate a new contract. The old contract expired in December.
The topic of labor unions tends to raise a lot of controversy. Regardless of your general opinion of organized labor, one thing should be abundantly clear: regardless of wealth, race, gender, or religion, we all have a statistically high chance of spending a large part of the end of our lives in a nursing home. According to the Centers For Disease Control (via the New York Times), 40% of people over 85 die in a nursing home.
In addition, according to a recent report from the Office of Health and Human Services, there were over 1,600 nursing home aides found guilty of nursing home abuse or neglect in 2010 alone. Of those, nearly 1 out of 5 had a prior criminal conviction.
Perhaps higher pay won’t make the people who are currently employed in nursing homes perform their jobs any better. However, it can’t help but make competition for those positions greater and, hopefully, reduce the criminal element employed in our nursing homes . Currently, many nursing home employees are paid the federal minimum wage.
If you have a loved one who has been the victim of nursing home abuse or nursing home neglect in an Illinois nursing home, contact my law offices for a free and confidential evaluation of your case. At my law offices, our Chicago nursing home lawyers have experiencing investigating all types of nursing home abuse and neglect, and we would welcome the opportunity to speak to you.