As a peer support specialist, I consider the work I do my vocation. I use my lived experience in recovery from a mood disorder to help folks who are in the midst of crisis to work through their suffering and toward healing. As a dedicated community servant, I was drawn to a role on a mobile crisis team. These teams are being created and deployed throughout California to address gaps in care. This is crucial work that will greatly benefit the well-being of individuals and our society. And as a society, we need to compensate and value these teams accordingly.
Our teams are dispatched to help people facing mental or behavioral health crises. We de-escalate the situation and connect people to additional care. The role also includes transporting people in crisis, communicating with law enforcement, and taking on a significant amount of risk and potential liability. It means serving as a first responder on calls that often involve severe risk of suicide and harm. Interacting with folks on the worst day of their lives is draining, difficult work. This is not an easy lift for $23.84 an hour, my starting salary.
Many times throughout the training, I heard the trainers say, “You don’t do this job for the money.” Implying that the rewarding nature of the work should be enough. But I disagree. Why do any job if not for the money? And why have we arranged what we value in our society so that front-line health care is severely undervalued? Any role that involves keeping people alive needs to be well compensated.
My unique skill set is valuable. When I was recruited for the position, I asked for $27 to $30 an hour. That rate was still nowhere near enough to afford basic necessities like rent or food in the county I live in. I was hired as a part-time employee, a means of self-preservation. I’ve done direct crisis work for years, so I know exactly how much crisis work I can do. The rate I was hired at, $23.84 an hour, is the ceiling for new hires, and it would have left me far below the definition of poverty in my county. But by far the most shocking aspect of the onboarding process was the decision I had to make between working eight- or 10-hour shifts.
I was initially hired to work eight-hour shifts, since the program operates 24/7/365. The trainers asked those of us who are hourly (which includes everyone working in my position, peer support) to essentially “vote.” California labor law dictates that if you work more than eight hours in a day, each hour over eight will be paid at an overtime rate. The idea of working 10-hour shifts came up very early on the first day of training. After asking many clarifying questions, I finally learned that the vote was to relinquish our rights as hourly employees to earn overtime for those first two hours over eight. I learned this in the final week of training. This left me feeling betrayed but also baffled. I will never vote against labor rights that I am promised by law. And while I quit the job long before the vote took place, even the idea of it makes me sick. How could a company ask such high-risk employees to relinquish their rights? This is repulsive and predatory behavior that needs to stop.
Many cops and EMS workers are unionized. The daily intensity causes secondary trauma. And yes, that’s part of the role. And yes, the county and the company can and must pay more if they actually value the skills of peer workers. Unionization and collective bargaining are the only ways forward for the team. I quit because of the pile of red flags I saw during onboarding. Yet the most heartbreaking part of the experience was that this is the norm in front-line mental and behavioral health care work, not the exception. I’ve worked in a variety of settings, and the common thread is extremely high risk and extremely low pay.
The only solution is to take the power back from management and big corporations. To form unions and use the power of collective bargaining to put workers in charge of their own value and well-being. Because we know management and the Board of Directors do not care about the workers on the front lines. For them, it’s too expensive to care. Workers need a loud voice to shine a light on workplace injustices and demand to earn what they need to thrive. I want to reimagine a healthcare system where every human being matters, so let’s celebrate the folks on the front lines and compensate them more than adequately. I’m one person with one voice, but when workers get together and organize, that voice is amplified. Workers everywhere must unionize for basic labor rights and living wages.
Let’s build a path to a place where people are paid for their skills and are compensated enough to thrive in the very communities they are passionate about serving.
Originally Published: 2024-08-08 11:18:00
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