I’ve been a certified nursing assistant (CNA) for 15 years; I take care of people’s sick family members in their homes and nursing homes. My job is to administer medicine, take vital signs, make sure the sick person is comfortable and help with their activities of daily living.

I am proud to be a CNA because I love helping people: just to see them smile because they have the help from someone like me makes me very happy. They know they can depend on me, and that I love what I do.

Sadly, despite my hard work, several years ago I worked for a company that simply didn’t pay me for my work. I was there for eight months when I started to notice that my weekly pay was a bit short. At first, I thought there was just simple mistakes, but after looking at paystubs and calculating my hours and my travel time between patients – both of which I was supposed to be getting paid for – I realized that I was deliberately underpaid, and sometimes not getting paid at all.

I first tried to fix the problem by working with my employer; I went to the headquarters on my own time to try and meet with supervisors to explain about the unpaid wages. When I was there, I saw other employees, my coworkers, arguing and fighting with supervisors about the wages they hadn’t been paid. I even saw supervisors call the police on other employees. I was nervous about the police being called on me, too, but I needed the money, so I continued to try to just meet with a supervisor. When they finally granted me a single meeting it did not go well; they told me that the pay for my time with patients and the pay for my travel to meet with patients was “like apples and oranges” but to wait until the next pay period and they’d make up what was, at that point, a massive shortfall.

It had already been very hard for me to work without the wages I was owed: I’m a single mother, and there were times I couldn’t feed my children and pay my bills. Sometimes, I sent my children to my mother’s home sometimes just to make sure they had something to eat; other times, I borrowed money to pay bills or compensate the babysitter I used while I was working, but I still couldn’t tell anyone when or even if I was going to get paid for the time I’d worked. I even went without gas and heat that winter because I couldn’t pay the bills; I survived by heating water in a microwave to wash, and cooking every meal in that same microwave. I got free food from my church and even my neighbors; I finally ended up applying and receiving public assistance. I was so frustrated that I wanted to break down and cry: I couldn’t spend another week not being able to feed my children, let alone having to choose between bread, milk or eggs. If my children had gotten sick, then I would have had to decide between food and medicine.

Not too long after my meeting with company supervisors – before the next pay period, even – I got hurt while working at a client’s home and went to the hospital. When I returned to work, I provided the proper documents of my hospitalization. They fired me, immediately, and the money I was due and which they promised me was coming didn’t materialize in my last paycheck. I was forced to move from my home (and into my mother’s).

My coworkers and I eventually filed a class action lawsuit against the company that hadn’t been paying any of us the wages we had earned. During the process, I met and talked to so many home care workers that all experienced the same things. As a result of the lawsuit we were finally paid all the money that was stolen from us – but it didn’t fix all the problems my former employer’s wage theft caused me. All I had wanted to do was help sick people feel better; instead, I ended up having the worst experience of my life.