Legacy Employees Demand Better

To All Parties Involved:

We, Legacy’s Frontline Workers, are increasingly concerned that unnecessary deaths and permanent injury will result from allowing the safety and well being of staff and patients to be determined by our administrators who are far detached from the reality of our work. When Covid hit in early 2020 the rest of society shut down, but we showed up. We took care of patients despite our own fears and well being. Today, almost two years later, the pandemic continues to blaze on. The support needed to maintain a safe patient care environment has eroded and with it our morale. Legacy’s administration has let down both staff and patients alike. We can no longer stand idly by as our standard of care becomes impossible to uphold. We are given no choice but to demand change.

Current conditions in Legacy’s hospitals are routinely unsafe for patients and unbearable for staff. We, as patient and self advocates, are at a breaking point and seek solutions to our concerns regarding the following:

1. Unsafe staffing levels
2. Lack of staff retention and appreciation
3. Decreased pandemic assistance due to loss of CAL pay
4. Lack of hazard pay for high-risk frontline staff
5. Inconsistent Covid policies which now allow Covid positive staff to work
6. Continued threats to personal safety and private property

We have already endured unnecessarily increased personal health risks due to a scarcity of protective equipment. Now we are suffering from severe staffing shortages resulting in an immediate and continued decline in patient care capabilities. While high patient censuses are not helping the situation, Legacy’s apathy towards implementing measures to retain staff during the pandemic is a core problem. With each day comes the resignation of more staff. Nurses, housekeepers, CNAs, technicians, security and many others are choosing to transition their careers away from Legacy. All of these positions are essential and each loss tips the scales further towards collapse.

While much of Legacy’s administration has been working remotely from home throughout the pandemic, no meaningful effort has been made to retain current frontline staff. Resigning staff leave without exit interviews further exemplifying administration’s disinterest in identifying causes or potential solutions to the retention problem. The value of travel nurses to bridge staffing shortages is undisputed. However, many staff feel the current dilemma was brought on by Legacy administration who chose not to offer reasonable incentives to retain core staff. The same nurse now has to work alongside a travel nurse often making 2-3x the staff RN's salary while objectively being less productive than core staff.

Administration has also demonstrated an inability to fill open positions across departments for extended periods of time. The fact that it has been so hard to fill these positions is further indication of the immense importance of retaining current staff. These holes remain despite offering large sign-on bonuses and relocation assistance to new hires that far exceed the one-time $1000 bonus given to current staff during the pandemic. It should also be noted that the current staff’s full bonus was adjusted downward for FTE less than 1.0. It does not go unnoticed that Legacy’s CEO Kathryn Correia received incentives and bonuses in excess of $200,000 despite never caring for a Covid patient. Is her work worth over 20,000% more than those of us on the Frontlines?

As it currently stands, the ability to staff units now relies on weaponizing the sense of loyalty we feel for each other and our patients. Staff are bombarded with texts day and night regarding the abundance of open shifts and dire need to fill them. They are often accompanied by guilt inducing messages like “help your friends.” Currently, Legacy is offering enhanced financial incentive for additional shifts worked. However, we already feel burned out, overworked and under-appreciated from the high patient loads and increasing expectations of our scheduled shifts. With all of the risk and none of the reward on those scheduled shifts, the drive to work extra in challenging situations is floundering.

With the recent change to CAL pay policy, staff have lost the financial support that would allow them to care for themselves during Covid illness. The new policy essentially requires proof that employees contracted Covid from a work exposure in order to receive CAL pay and its associated benefits. This could, of course, be challenging to prove. Additionally, staff with manageable symptoms are now to return to work after 5 days of Covid infection. We continue to risk our health to care for our patients and now administration has made it more difficult to care for ourselves. Because we are not being allowed to fully care for ourselves through a Covid illness, we are now expected to bring a highly contagious illness with us to work.

These CAL pay policy changes come on the heels of administration’s decision to fire hundreds of employees who chose not to get vaccinated instead of granting exemptions and testing weekly. Whatever one’s feelings are regarding this policy, it must be acknowledged that our staffing levels are now so unsafe that we are allowing Covid positive staff to work. This is yet another example of lack of foresight and consideration of unintended consequences.

Amidst everything else, there is increasing violence directed towards healthcare workers on the job site. Staff are literally being attacked inside and outside of the hospital. Not only is there a threat of bodily harm due to the persistent lack of appropriate security staffing and safety measures, there is also an upward trend in staff’s cars being vandalized - windows broken, gas siphoned and catalytic converters stolen. Many of the lot cameras don’t work and there simply aren’t enough security personnel to patrol.

We understand this is both a national and global crisis in health care. We also know there are possible solutions, and ones which don’t seem to be under consideration. If it is too dangerous for administrators to physically be at work or even for staff to have a potluck perhaps that is a signal that hazard pay is warranted. If your staff are leaving for higher paying jobs, perhaps the 2% raise that didn’t account for the 7% inflation wasn’t enough. If you can’t find enough staff nurses to hire, perhaps it is time to drop the bachelors requirement and begin hiring associates degree nurses. If you are already understaffed, perhaps it is a bad idea to fire hundreds of unvaccinated employees you could instead just test once a week - this would have also prevented the urgent need to hire many of the travelers. If you have to give thousands of dollars worth of hiring bonuses for each position, perhaps the same should be given as a retention bonus. It would save all the cost of hiring and training while maintaining staffing levels. Solutions have been there the whole time.

Administration’s continued disregard of critical staffing and safety issues is potentially putting lives at risk. We urge Legacy’s administration to contemplate this and take action so that we can get back to adequate staffing and safe patient care. We demand the following:

1. $5000 bonus for every Legacy employee
2. 7% increase in base pay to match rising inflation for all Legacy staff
3. $13 more/hr hazard pay for all patient facing staff at Legacy
4. 2 wks of COVID specific CAL Pay/paid sick time per Legacy employee per calendar year
5. Increased security staffing and patrols at all Legacy campuses; functional lot cameras

As well, we are requesting an independent public accounting of Legacy’s finances and use of federal funds related to the pandemic.

Continually putting at risk our patient’s physical health, our mental health, our moral standards and our quality of care is too high a price to pay. For Legacy Frontline Workers, we know that change will not come without a collective effort and willingness to make short term sacrifices for positive, long term outcomes. Please consider joining our efforts. Email your name, department and contact information to LegacyFrontlineWorkers@gmail.com.

Sincerely,

Legacy Frontline Workers
LegacyFrontlineWorkers@gmail.com