Wolf calls for more nursing home staff
Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal this week to add nursing home care hours comes just days before workers at 21 Pennsylvania facilities prepare to strike.
Wolf announced the first of several proposed rule changes Wednesday: Under the plan, which would first have to undergo public review and comment, skilled nursing facilities would have to provide 4.1 hours per day of direct care, up from the current minimum of 2.7 hours.
“As Pennsylvania’s senior population continues to increase, these overdue updates will help ensure that skilled nursing facilities provide residents with high-quality care now and in the future,” Department of Aging Secretary Robert Torres said at the Wednesday event, held at a Harrisburg-area care home.
The rule proposal arrives as some 1,500 union care workers prepare for a one-day strike to call attention to staffing and safety concerns. The caregivers and nurses, affiliated with SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, are set to walk out Tuesday at facilities across the state where contracts expired this summer.
“When workers decide to go on strike, that’s a very clear indication of just how bad things are,” union President Matthew Yarnell said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “They have been demanding change for decades and then watched as their residents, co-workers and own families died of COVID-19.”
Senate Democrats held a hearing Wednesday on work conditions in the state’s health care industry. The senators praised the SEIU workers, called for more hiring and pointed to surveys that show high rates of stress and anxiety among overworked caregivers.
“There is no excuse for allowing health care professionals – who are giving lifesaving care – to work in substandard conditions where they are not making a living wage,” state Sen. Jim Brewster, D-Allegheny, said.
Care home operators in the Pennsylvania Health Care Association complained that the Wolf staffing proposal would require 7,000 more workers “who, at the moment, do not exist.” The additional hires would cost $6 million per week in wages without sufficient funding available, they said.
While hospital and nursing home officials across the country have complained of a caregiver shortage, union representatives point to low wages that make the jobs less desirable. In a statement last month announcing the union strike vote, one certified nursing assistant said: “How can you get permanent staff if they can make more money down the street at a convenience store?”
Bill would hit mugshot sites
A Pennsylvania legislator is working to ban the use of so-called mugshot websites, which charge fees to remove police booking photos.
Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Lehigh, asked lawmakers this month to support the ban, which would levy fines up to $5,000 for those who demand compensation to take down photos. The websites, which have existed for many years, collect millions of police and jail booking photographs – even for those never convicted of a crime – and charge fees to take them down.
“The activity mugshots websites engage in is nothing more than extortion,” Mackenzie said.
At least 18 states have moved to restrict the sites, often with limited success, according to a 2017 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts. In states that banned the practice, sites sometimes kept operating with little change, the report said.
Mackenzie’s proposal lists at least eight co-sponsors, although the bill’s full text is not yet available.
U.S. reps join curriculum campaign
Federal lawmakers are joining a state-level push, covered recently in this column, to control the way racial issues are taught in schools.
This week, U.S. Rep. Fred Keller, R-12th District, signed on as a co-sponsor to the “Stop CRT Act,” a reference to critical race theory. Rep. John Joyce, R-13th District, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-14th District, and Rep. Scott Perry, R-10th District, are already co-sponsors of the bill, which would cut federal funds to groups that teach certain, broadly defined ideas about race and history.
While the bill has effectively no chance of passage, it resembles similar efforts in many states, including Pennsylvania. It would ban lessons that claim the Declaration of Independence or U.S. Constitution are “racist documents” and would ban teaching that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Conservative lawmakers across the country have sought to restrict teaching about racial history – a response to the Black Lives Matter movement and racial justice protests.
Ryan Brown covers statewide politics for Ogden Newspapers. He can be reached at rbrown@altoonamirror.com.