It is long past time that these workers are treated as truly essential.
Many expressed frustration-and sometimes anger-over their lack of life-saving protective equipment. They spoke with pride about their work, but few felt respected, even as they put their lives on the line. ( You can read their stories here.) Despite being declared “essential,” the workers I interviewed described feeling overlooked and deprioritized, even expendable. Over the last several weeks, I interviewed nearly a dozen low-wage health workers on the front lines of COVID-19. The vast majority of these workers are women, and they are disproportionately people of color. They are nursing assistants, phlebotomists, home health aides, housekeepers, medical assistants, cooks, and more. Like the higher-paid doctors and nurses they work alongside, these essential workers are risking their lives during the pandemic-but with far less prestige and recognition, very low pay, and less access to the protective equipment that could save their lives. Hopps is one of millions of low-wage essential health workers on the COVID-19 front lines. They don’t think about housekeeping, maintenance, dietary, nursing assistants, patient care techs, and administration.” “When you think about health care work, the first people you think about are the doctors and the nurses. “Housekeeping has never been respected,” she told me recently. “It’s me and the other housekeepers who sit and talk with to brighten up their day, because they can’t have family members visiting.”ĭespite her contributions, she doesn’t feel recognized. She cares deeply about the patients she works with, and knows that the value of her job goes well beyond cleaning. “If we don’t clean the rooms correctly, the pandemic will get worse,” said Hopps. Too often, we overlook the heroism and dignity of millions of low-paid, undervalued, and essential health workers like Sabrina Hopps, a 46-year-old housekeeping aide in an acute nursing facility in Washington, D.C.
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