Oakwood Village employees, united together as SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin, are dedicated to improving care and jobs so that residents receive the highest possible standard of care that they need and deserve.
Since January 2020, almost a thousand employees have left Oakwood Village, including 208 during the first half of 2022 alone. Too many shifts go unfilled or are filled with agency caregivers who do not know the facility or the residents who call Oakwood their home. When shifts go unfilled, we have less time to spend with residents. We're not able to provide the therapeutic care that they deserve and we want to provide. When more agency staff are used or when our own staff members float to fill in for others too often, it increases the chances that important details of residents' care such as pressure sores are missed and the routines of our residents in memory care are unknown, creating more anxieties and difficulties for our residents. It doesn't have to be this way.
Oakwood employees need a contract that includes provisions protecting continuity of care that minimize agency staffing or making employees “float” to unfamiliar work areas. If there are staffing challenges, there must be a fair process for reallocating staff that minimizes employees floating to unfamiliar care units. And when staff members are mandated to stay past their shift to care for residents, they should be paid overtime. Taking away overtime as Oakwood is proposing will only further erode employee retention.
We call on CEO Reginald Hislop III and the Board of Directors to apply the Oakwood values to the ways they treat their dedicated staff members by agreeing to a fair union contract with wages, incentives and benefits that promote retention of current staff and attracts new employees to deliver the best possible care for Oakwood Village residents.