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Hospital workers say they're still waiting on promised crisis pay from Mercy Health Muskegon

One staffer and union member say on top of being short-staffed, the hospital is having issues with their payroll.

MUSKEGON, Mich. — Mercy Health Muskegon has hundreds of job openings right now, and one hospital staffer with the Service Employees International Union says on top of being understaffed, they're being underpaid. 

"The culture at the hospital's really bad right now," respiratory therapist Cyndi Zeanwick says. 

She says she and her coworkers are feeling burnt out because of the strain placed on the hospital industry.

"Our department right now has 13 open positions, which is about a third of our budgeted staff, just in the Respiratory Therapy Department," she says. 

Zeanwick says on top of being short-staffed, the hospital is having issues with their payroll. The hospital started crisis pay on top of their earned wages last month, but she says either multiple employees haven't gotten it and others say it's not being taxed correctly. She says the issues continued even after a second check was cut to correct the first problems more than a week ago. 

"They that was never told to us that, 'Oh, you know, we're gonna tax this as a bonus,'" she says. "We were never told that. This was presented to us as crisis pay."

In their latest statement, hospital officials say, "We are committed to ensuring that every colleague who was promised critical staffing pay will receive the payment owed. If colleagues have questions related to pay or withholdings, they should contact their manager directly who will quickly address their concerns."

"We've been on the front lines for the last 20 months and have basically gotten nothing for it, except more work and less staff and a bag of chips," Zeanwick says.

She says she hasn't heard from her management about their problems, and she wishes that she and other full-timers were treated like the travelling doctors and nurses being brought in to help.

"If you pay your dedicated staff what you're paying these travelers, you'd probably have a lot less issues and you'd have some happier employees," Zeanwick says. 

The hospital did extend the staffer's crisis pay through the beginning of November because of critical understaffing at the hospital. 

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