Why exactly are nursing aids paid so poorly?

Comments

• texture@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  i work in a nursing home, but im afraid i’ll not be able to afford to die in one.

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  • Soggy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’d rather walk in front of a bus than die in a nursing home, frankly. Wasting away unable to care for myself seems uniquely miserable.

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    • texture@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Im not saying i want to end up in a home, just that i should be able to afford one if i should need and want to be in one.

      My uncle decided on MAID yesterday, i support his choice.

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    • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      (Not so) fun fact : that is exactly what some end up doing ! Gf’s grandmother escaped her nursing home to walk in front of a train.

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• mechoman444@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The more I think about it, the more I realize daycare centers probably don’t make nearly as much money as people assume.

  My three-year-old goes to daycare, and we pay around $1,000 per month. Sometimes they send home a list showing which children are assigned to bring certain food items, so we have a rough idea of enrollment. The last time we counted, there were about 18 kids in my son’s class. That’s roughly $18,000 in revenue from that classroom each month.

  Now consider the costs. There are four employees plus a manager. Even if each one only makes $15 an hour, payroll alone consumes a huge portion of that revenue. Then there are utilities, insurance, food, equipment, building maintenance, transportation costs for the bus, licensing requirements, and everything else needed to keep the facility running.

  If anything, they may not be charging enough.

  The real issue is that the entire system seems broken from the start. Daycare is barely affordable for many families, yet many childcare providers are operating on razor-thin margins. Parents struggle to pay for care, workers aren’t highly paid, and daycare centers themselves often aren’t making huge profits. Somewhere along the line, the economics simply don’t work very well.

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  • Drusas@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Only 1k? Where are you?

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  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    okay it’s easier for me to analyze if i annualize the numbers. 18k monthly revenue is 216k annual revenue. 15/hr is 30k/year (assuming a 2000 hour FTE year. it’s really 2080 but the math is so much easier at 2000) with four employees that’s 135k/yr. You’ve got 81k left for other expenses like food, cleaning supplies, advertising, legal bullshit and whatnot else that all comes out before you get to the owner’s cut.

    the first two years of most businesses are where they fail. usually because they did not have enough cash on hand to cover two years of expenses when they opened, and it takes about that long on average for a business to break even.

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    • whereitsat@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      even if that’s only 50k a year after all is said and done it’s 50k a year where you don’t have to do shit.

      play a sad fiddle for all the daycare owners.

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• gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  for some reason, people working in healthcare don’t stand up for their rights, and rather accept a very shitty pay. it’s … because they do it “for the people who need help” without looking at economic issues (especially their own) at all.

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  • Cherries@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In our society, if you don’t have a job, you die. A shit job is better than no job and standing up for your rights could lose you your job. The solution is unionizing, but unionizing is very difficult and dangerous because 1. Unions have been heavily propaganized against and 2. Bosses will do a bunch of illegal stuff to prevent unions.

    Unions are becoming more popular as conditions worsen, but the capitalist owners are fighting harder than ever to prevent the growing unionization.

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• arcine@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think it’s probably not that simple. If it was, someone could come in and massively undercut the entire market…

  But hey, maybe it is ! And if it is so, then we can try and organise some non-profit nursing homes that charge exactly what it costs to actually run the place and pay the employees decently, and even slightly less than that thanks to donations !

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  • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean it’s pretty simple… The owner is capitalizing on the production value of the workers.

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  • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You would find yourself in all kinds of legal disputes, permits not getting approved because the wife of the owner of the expensive corporate facility is on the city council, anonymous “stories” about your facility being told to the media, etc.

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  • LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We’re at the stage of private equity where that’s really hard to do.

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• vivalapivo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Submit to market and die

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• chillpanzee@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They’re stupid expensive because:

  1. Corporate profits.
  2. Continual legal settlement payouts.
  3. Obscene referral fees to scammy referral companies like “A Place for Mom.”

  There do exist places that treat employees well and treat residents well. But they are harder to find since the referral places pretend they don’t exist.

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• ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You don’t understand, the CEO needs a lot of money, to bribe cops when he rapes children.

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• reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  nursing homes could literally drain the elderly of their blood and sell it for extra income and they wouldnt be that much worse morally.

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  • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Are we sure they’re not doing this already ? The only compelling arguments I can make against it is the legality, but they don’t seem to care much about that in other cases, and the fact that they’d have to spend more on food to make them renew their blood. And I’ve seen the food and portions they serve in the “good” nursing homes

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• Xaphanos@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  My uninformed guess would be insurance. When 95-year old grandma dies, someone is getting sued. If only to defray some of the funeral costs. The aides aren’t worth suing. But the agency is.

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  • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That happens a hell of a lot less than you’d think, even in cases of obvious malfeasance.

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• minoscopede@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Anyone who sells to ordinary consumers has to pay 20-30% taxes, twice. Once for the customer, and once for them. Meanwhile, mega-corporations don’t pay any taxes on their on income no matter how many steps their money goes.

  We should not tax anyone that sells services to consumers. Waitstaff, daycare professionals, nursing aids, etc should have a tax rate of 0%.

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• psion1369@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So I really have to wonder if the insurance required to run these places is over-priced as well.

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• brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  …Because it’s ridiculously labor intensive? Have yall ever had to take care of someone really old, with failing health? Or really young?

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  I’m not saying there aren’t huge structural issues, but it’s fundamentally hard. Taking care of just a few others will absolutely drain a professional, and paying them a livable wage + tax/benefits, with no other expenses whatsoever, will drain bank accounts of those taken care of.

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  • bluesheep@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think you misunderstood the OP. Yes, taking care of our elders can be a very exhausting task. But those of us trained in taking care of them should not be paid a sub standard living wage while the nursing homes (and their managers/owners/w-e) get paid the big bucks.

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    • Alkali@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Do y’all really think managers make “big bucks”? Don’t get me wrong, most management is living the 90’s middle class life in 2026. But when did that become aspirational?

      I still remember the Simpsons being the representation of a poor family. Now they are high class. That shit is not managers fault. Most managers are just working to not lose what they have while supporting their people as much as they can.

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    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That doesn’t fix the cost issue, though.

      Basically, with the world’s current demographic trajectory, an absolutely massive chunk of global production needs to be allocated towards such caregivers and the elderly. There’s no way around it.

      And yes, the management structure is completely screwed up, but I’m just saying that’s not seeing the forest through the trees. It masks the bigger issue. If you eliminated every single manager, every ancillary position, it wouldn’t even be close to enough.

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  • Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is a naive understanding of where the money goes. The corporate owners of nursing homes could make less profit. It would be ideal if those leeches didn’t exist but we still live in a capitalist world, so they won’t be going anywhere soon, unfortunately.

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• SooperGoose@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Capitalism cannot function without paying workers less than their labor is worth, thus creating “profit” margins for rich people to steal from

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• SabinStargem@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Because those nursing aids aren’t working on wealthy people. The circumstances of a worker is proportional to the level of threat and inconvenience it presents to the elite if they aren’t in good shape.

  We need more friction against the corporations, be it the implication of force, strikes, or quiet quitting.

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  Should America’s economic system be replaced in the future, a key thing to do is to eliminate most of the difference between the poorest and wealthiest. That would require standardizing incomes, capping wealth accumulation, workers voting for leadership, and using universal benefits such as free shelter and food to prevent coercive workplaces.

  Our current economy is an creature that inherited the properties of feudalism, and wasn’t explicitly designed to be good for civilization. Creating a whole new system with deliberate intent & mechanisms is the best path forward.

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• muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Because it’s a scam. The people doing the actual work always make the least money.

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• some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What, you think either of you matter? They don’t give a fuck about you.

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• Eternal192@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Nursing is difficult but daycare is full of little frikkin gremlins.

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• architect@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They get paid so awful drug addicts and gamblers are mostly doing that job. One that my family pays (i have no say in this) has wrecked two of the grandparents cars, stolen hundreds of dollars, and now us bringing their kids with them when they work. I’d rather be dead than used like that.

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• inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So close yet so complete lack of critical thinking away.

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• Smaile@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  it because everyone is acting extractively because the economy is failing, it’ll be some time before theyre betten back into proper shape

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• Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  it is to avoid paying RNs/NP, and MDs. its a cost cutting measure.

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• tackleberry@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Because it’s capitalism! Every service exists for profit to be made and you can only make enough profit by paying workers so much.

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• 4am@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Maybe it’s poor framing to get others to read on without being scared away by what feels on its face to be hyperbole

  But “I don’t understand this economy where”

  Yes, Yes you do. Say it. Say it, coward.

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