TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) - A labor union is now calling for change after an employee at Sunland Center dies while driving to work. AFSCME claims this is after she worked 85 days straight, her last days working 16-hour shifts.
Now, coworkers from Sunland, which is a treatment center for individuals of mental and physical disabilities, are speaking out. They are calling for more staff to make sure this never happens again.
Donald Bailey is a fellow employee at Sunland who has worked with Hawlen Ebanks, the employee who died, for more than 15 years. “If she had something, she would give it. And everybody loved her,” states Bailey, “and she could run two units by herself and I have seen that lady work and work and work and come back the next day.”
Bailey was one of Ebank’s greatest friends. They worked together in Miami, then both moved to Marianna in 2004. “Days off she’d be working and days in between she would be working,” says Bailey.
According to AFSCME, which is the union for public service employees, on November 24th, Ebanks was driving to Sunland where she worked. That is when they say she crashed on the premises. After 12 days in a coma at the hospital, Ebanks lost her life.
After coworkers of her’s reached out to the agency, AFSCME requested her timesheets from the state. Christopher Serrano works for AFSCME, “We then were appalled by what we saw it was a tremendous amount of time that she had been working without any days off.”
As seen in the timesheets, from September 1st to November 24th, Ebanks worked at least 52 days of 16-hour shifts. Some for stretches of 8 days straight, “It’s a crazy thought,” expresses Bailey, “but I can realize it because I have been there done that.”
Serrano furthers, “Happens all the time, unfortunately.”
However, the union also found discrepancies.
In the timesheet, there are areas that show Ebanks worked a straight 24 hours. There are also six days that are missing from her timesheet.
AFSCME says it did confirm with her employers and colleagues that she worked 85 days at Sunland, with no days off.
“That needs to be something that they are pushing to address and fix,” states Serrano, “To make sure that that place does not just meet the minimum coverage requirements but meets the requirements of a human being to function without having to work those long hours, and have minimal sleep and work in a dangerous facility that every move could lead to life and death.”
The reason for the time-sheet errors is unknown. AFSCME believes it may be an error when the time-sheet was copied from the state’s system to an Excel sheet, however that has not been confirmed.
On Tuesday, WCTV reached out to Sunland. We asked why Ebanks was approved to work those hours, and what might be the cause.
As of Wednesday night, we have not yet received a response from the center.
Serrano says he believes it’s due to a staffing shortage, “You have to have the necessary amount of employees employed at the hospital to run efficiently, not that you work the ones that you have to death.”
Bailey shares, “If we don’t say it, if we don’t shout it from the mountaintops, who is going to say it?”
Employees are wanting answers, and hope something changes, so this never happens again.
AFSCME says they have an emergency meeting scheduled with Sunland for Friday at 1 p.m., and that is where they hope to get some answers.
Copyright 2020 WCTV. All rights reserved.
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