NEWS CITY DESK
Testing Patience After nurses aired grievances about unfair pay and treatment, a D.C. emergency services manager told nurses they could be “ass wiping” instead.
When D.C. experiences storms or heat waves this summer, the nurses who staff outdoor COVID-19 testing sites risk losing hundreds of dollars in pay. One nurse estimates she lost $1,370 because the Bowser administration closed the government-supported sites twice when she was scheduled to work in late July. For someone who traveled to D.C. just to test its residents and pays $3,900 per month for housing in both the nation's capital and her home state more than 800 miles away, $1,370 is not nothing. Her contract states that a “client may cancel up to 0 shifts for which [the] traveler will not be paid.” Shift cancellations are the least of the traveling nurses’ concerns. Another nurse who lost hundreds of dollars in pay due to weatherrelated cancellations says she missed a critical doctor’s appointment to avoid an unexcused absence. She says the rule of three tardies equalling one absence and three absences resulting in termination is new and not equally enforced. A third nurse who worked at outdoor testing sites says his hours and pay were retroactively cut when management learned he was not working the full shift in order to take hydration breaks. His contract was terminated when he tried to get paid for every hour he was at the testing site, instead of just the time he spent swabbing people’s nasal cavities. A fourth nurse, who travels more than an hour into the city, clocks in at 7 a.m. and out at 8 p.m., with three unpaid hoursa off of work in the afternoon. The schedule does not match what is in her contract, and she says she would have never agreed to the assignment had she known the hours in advance. Interviews with 11 nurses, along with reviews of emails, contracts, and a tape-recorded meeting, paint a picture of a chaotic work environment, where health care workers say they are told to accept unfair rules and shifting schedules even if they do not jive with the contracts they signed through Maxim Healthcare
Darrow Montgomery
By Amanda Michelle Gomez @AmanduhGomez
Services, the staffing company that hired them. Other nurses wanted to share their stories, but declined out of fear of getting fired for speaking out. It’s the kind of workplace where a nurse does not feel comfortable telling a manager her gloves are too small. She does not want to piss anyone off. The nurses are short-term government subcontractors who traveled from states all across the country to help D.C. respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Since starting work at government-supported testing sites this summer, nurses say they saw their hours and pay cut and were made to feel “disrespected” and “dispensable.” After nurses aired some of their grievances, a division chief at the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency told them there are “worse assignments” and they could be “ass wiping” instead, according to a recording of an Aug. 10 meeting obtained by City Paper. The HSEMA division chief is no longer overseeing the Maxim contract. “That employee’s actions during that meeting were not acceptable to us, which is why we removed him from the testing part of our operation,” says Department of Public Works Director Christopher Geldart, who serves as operations chief for D.C.’s response to COVID-19. Geldart says the rest of the nurses’ accusations should be directed to Maxim Healthcare Services, their employer. He says D.C.’s contract with Maxim does not limit scheduled hours, as some of Maxim’s contracts with nurses do, and allows for at least six cancellations without pay. “We don't set the individual nurses’ hours.
6 august 28, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
We set the hours when we're going to be testing and then Maxim, as our contractor, has to meet those hours,” he tells City Paper. “If that's not satisfying to one of their employees, that's an employee talking to their employer and saying, ‘This is not something I want to do,’” Geldart says. “That’s not really on the District to say whether that person is satisfied with that or not, because that's not our requirement, which is why we contracted this in the first place. Because we knew we were going to have requirements to do certain things like this and we wanted to hire a professional firm that could handle the professionals coming in to do that.” D.C. started contracting with Maxim at the beginning of the public health emergency. The $10-million, labor-hour contract was awarded to Maxim “to provide the full spectrum of temporary healthcare staffing support related to COVID-19 crisis,” according to a copy of the contract. “The services will be provided to and managed by DC Health at several sites throughout the District.” One of those sites was the makeshift hospital at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center that the city has not needed to use. There are few mentions of shifts in the 49-page document, including “all personnel should expect at a maximum to work three twelve-hour shifts per week for the entire engagement.” The contract also specifies that “a dispute between the Contractor and subcontractor relating to the amounts or entitlement of a subcontractor to a payment or a late payment interest penalty under the Quick Payment Act does not constitute a dispute to which the District is a party.”
In an email to City Paper, a Maxim spokesperson says they cannot discuss details of the “partnership,” but declined to explain why. “I can tell you that we are working diligently to meet the scheduling needs of both clients and staff while operating within the parameters set forth in our employment agreements,” says the company spokesperson. “Like many other organizations, we have had to remain flexible and open to making adjustments due to circumstances beyond our control during this challenging time. We deeply value our employee and client relationships and remain committed to doing everything possible to meet—and exceed—the expectations of both.” Some nurses decided to end their contracts early because of the working conditions, while others are counting down the days until their assignments end. Nearly all the nurses interviewed, including four who worked on a contract basis in New York City when it was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., say this is one of their worst assignments yet. “There are no consequences for agencies or facilities—zero—for them shortening your contract, shortening your hours,” says a nurse who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution. “They are making us feel expendable. I want to stay here and fulfill the contract, but they are making it really hard.” Roughly 80 travel nurses staff public testing sites like those at Judiciary Square and D.C. firehouses, along with congregate care settings like nursing homes and St. Elizabeths Hospital. They’ve helped D.C. complete more than 260,000 tests. D.C. reached 200,000 tests in early August, and public sites and congregate care settings accounted for more than 71,000, or just over one-third of total tests. According to DC Health’s coronavirus dashboard, D.C.’s positivity rate has been below 5 percent since June 13, right around when officials scaled up public testing sites to include firehouses. Nationwide, only D.C and nine states are doing enough testing to mitigate the spread of the virus. For all the talk of health care workers being essential during the pandemic, nurses in D.C. and across the country have described feeling expendable to the media. Nurses in some D.C. hospitals were not given adequate personal protective equipment or hazard pay during the pandemic, and nurses who typically work in D.C. public schools were told by Children's National Hospital to serve in COVID-19 response efforts or risk being laid off. Dozens of school nurses ended up being temporarily laid off. Unlike the aforementioned nurses, nurses working D.C. testing sites report to an offsite employer headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and do not have a union to fall back on. Whenever they encountered issues, travel nurses were told to speak with their recruiters, who in turn told nurses they were surprised to learn of contract discrepancies and overall treatment. “The money was not worth it for how they were treating us,” says Rycky Pera, who was contracted to work at government-supported testing sites between June 8 and Aug. 14 for $55 an hour. Pera, who’s worked as a nurse for nine years,
