Connecticut
“We Can’t Let Someone Decide For Us!” — The 2012 Member Political Action Kickoff
Hospital PCA Brenda Morisette asks the congressional candidates about the proposed for-profit hospital takeover in Waterbury.
Kicking off the 2012 elections, hundreds of 1199 and other SEIU members gathered at our annual Political Action Conference in mid-January, held at Central Connecticut State University.
“It’s important for healthcare workers to be here, because politics runs the world,” said Ellen Jeffries, a CNA from Blair Manor nursing home. “The class warfare against working people scares me. The rich 1% will get out and vote. We can’t let someone decide for us – we have to vote!”
At the conference, members interviewed candidates running for U.S. Congress and seeking 1199’s endorsement, including:
- Susan Bysewicz, Chris Murphy, & William Tong — each running to replace retiring U.S. Senator Lieberman
- Chris Donovan, Elizabeth Esty, & Dan Roberti – each running to become the new U.S. Representative in the 5th Congressional District (Waterbury, New Britain, Meriden, Danbury and western CT region)
- Jim Himes – running for re-election to U.S. Representative – 4th CD (Fairfield County)
- Joe Courtney – running for re-election to U.S. Representative – 2nd CD (Eastern CT)
Members vote on candidates to recommend for endorsement.
As always, 1199 members then together discussed the pros and cons of each candidate and made recommendations on who 1199 should support. These recommendations are then forwarded to the elected rank-and-file 1199 Executive Board for final action.
In a letter dated February 13, HealthBridge has threatened to close all of its union facilities in Connecticut, putting 1200 nursing home residents at risk of eviction to serve corporate greed and increase its investors’ profits. 1199 President David Pickus has written a response to the threat which reads, in part:
I assure you that District 1199 is adamantly opposed to the closing of any Healthbridge facility. It would seem, however, that Healthbridge, having employed the lockout tactic at West River, is now employing threatened closures to pressure its employees and their Union. More and more Healthbridge’s words and actions send the following message to the Union, Healthbridge employees and the State of Connecticut:
Healthbridge’s investors are not satisfied with the rate of profits from its Connecticut Union nursing homes. If the Union will not agree to massive concessions that will dramatically increase Healthbridge investor profits (concessions that would, of course, drive many of its employees below the poverty line), Healthbridge will simply wash its’ hands of its obligations to its residents, its employees and the State of Connecticut by attempting to close the homes and use the real estate for more profitable pursuits.
If the Union is correct, and there is much evidence to suggest it is, eternal shame on Healthbridge and its investors; the Union will do all in its power to oppose such an infamous scheme.
Click here to sign the petition to support the locked-out HealthBridge workers and the residents who depend on them.
Will a Hospital Takeover Improve Health Care & Protect Jobs in Waterbury?
Since the LHP Hospital Group – a Texas-based for-profit hospital group owned in part by a private equity firm - first proposed taking over and merging Waterbury and St. Mary’s Hospitals, hundreds of residents of Waterbury have raised serious concerns about what the impact will be on health care and jobs in Waterbury. Click here for a flyer that outlines some basic information about the proposed takeover, and why so many of us are concerned.
Now we are bringing our concerns to the Waterbury Board of Aldermen on Tuesday, February 21st at 6pm. Click here for a flyer about the event, and BE THERE to send a message to our local elected officials about how important this issue is to the entire community.
As a part of a coalition called Community United – together with the Alliance for Retired Americans, the National Physicians Alliance, CT Health Care Associates, CT Citizen Action Group, the Working Families Party, the Western CT Labor Council Health Care for All Coalition, and the Naugatuck Valley Project – 1199 has helped lead the way in asking the LHP Hospital Group to sit down with the community, answer our questions, and work with us to develop a plan that improves health care and protects jobs in Waterbury.
“We have been asking LHP to meet with us since December but they have refused,” says Community United co-chair Steven Schrag. “We wrote to them and talked personally to CEO Daniel Moen, but he would not set a meeting date with us. We were promised by Dr. Jerome Sugar that we would try to set up a meeting, but Dr. Sugar couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it either.” Both Moen and Sugar have said that LHP would meet with community people “at the appropriate time.”
“We refuse to be an afterthought in this process,” says Schrag. “So we are bringing our questions to the Board of Aldermen to see if they can help.”
Speak Out for Jobs & Health Care in Waterbury
The proposed takeover of Waterbury and St. Mary’s Hospitals could mean better care and more revenue for our city. OR it could mean higher unemployment and less care for our families. Join us at City Hall as we try to get answers to our concerns!
Click here for a downloadable flyer about the event.
1199NE President: If HealthBridge Wins, We All Lose
Last week, the Hartford Courant published a shameful editorial siding with the rich owners of HealthBridge who locked out nursing home workers two months ago. Their column even advised locked-out workers that paying up to $7,000 more out of pocket for health care could help them manage their health “more wisely.” 1199NE President David Pickus wrote a response that was printed in yesterday’s Courant, providing some real perspective on what is at stake in the HealthBridge lockout:
Thirty years ago, nursing home work paid minimum wage, had no benefits or protections of any kind and turnover rates often exceeded 100 percent annually. Then as now, caregivers were primarily women, people of color and immigrants, who had no power to address these obstacles to self-sufficiency until they organized themselves into a union of health care workers.
Over three decades, they have slowly succeeded in raising standards to a point where they have a modicum of economic stability. Today, one for-profit chain of nursing homes based in New Jersey, HealthBridge/Care One, is demanding to turn the clock back, driving caregivers into near poverty to fatten the corporate bottom line and widening the already cavernous income inequality in our state.
[...]Allowing HealthBridge to achieve these goals will have a deep and lasting impact on the women and men who care for the elderly and infirm residents in HealthBridge facilities in Connecticut. The economic cuts on which the corporation is insisting will add up to …nearly $61,000 for the average HealthBridge worker over six years. [...That] means choosing between paying the electric or the water bill, running short when you need to fill your gas tank on your way to work, not being able to set aside enough even for in-state tuition for your child’s future. It means another big step away from self-sufficiency and back toward economic instability.
[...]By exploiting the current climate of economic uncertainty and unemployment fears, HealthBridge has put at risk the quality of care for the residents of its nursing homes here, eroded desperately needed good jobs with benefits in Connecticut, and pushed caregivers inexorably away from even the smallest measure of self-sufficiency — all to inflate the corporate bottom line, with no accountability to the public that funds its business.
If HealthBridge wins, we all lose.
Click here to sign the petition in support of HealthBridge caregivers and the residents they care for.
Connecticut State Employee Challenges the 1%
Every day when we open our newspapers or turn on the TV, we find attacks on workers, our unions, and the progress that we have made. For example, look no further than this shameful Hartford Courant editorial that sides with rich nursing home owners and even advises locked-out workers that paying up to $7,000 more out of pocket for health care could help them manage their health “more wisely”.
Right-wing talking heads and editorial boards want to blame union members — like teachers, firefighters, and health care workers — for today’s economic problems. Their goal is to shift the focus away from the reckless speculation and greed of Wall St., and away from profit-hungry private equity firms whose CEOs are rewarded handsomely for outsourcing jobs, and away from a system where the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined.
Back in October 2011, 1199 Delegate Mike Doyle, a Community Clinician at the Bridgeport Mental Health Center, was fed up with all of the lies and misinformation and the attempts by the 1% to divide-and-conquer working people. So he wrote a powerful letter that was published in the Connecticut Post in which he called urgently for job creation for the unemployed and for holding corporations accountable. It’s worth reading again today:
…Most major industries were able to exit [our state] with no strings attached. If a parent did that to their family they would be in jail for dereliction of duty to their family, endangering the welfare of minors, etc. Our politicians stood idly by and waved goodbye, hoping that the CEOs would remember them and ask them to go golfing or fishing sometime in the future, while their constituents struggled to keep their heads above water and their bank account out of a deep hole.
Doyle also offered a strong defense of the important role of state employees in providing vital services to the public, sometimes at great danger to themselves:
Do the authors of vicious attacks against state employees ever pick up a shovel to fill a pothole on our highways as cars go whizzing by at 70‐plus miles per hour? Do the authors of that right-wing propaganda ever hold someone down while they were going into a seizure from alcoholic withdrawal or having a psychotic breakdown? The answer is no.
To read the letter in its entirety, please click here for a downloadable and printable copy. And click here to stand up for the locked-out HealthBridge workers and their residents by signing our petition.
School and group home workers who serve troubled youth near Manchester, CT at New Hope Manor voted overwhelmingly to form their union with SEIU Healthcare 1199NE on January 25 – with 85% of employees voting YES for the union. In total, 85 employees united together across several different worksites at New Hope Manor: a school, six group homes for girls, and a seventh home for boys.
“In my five years at New Hope Manor I’ve seen good workers who truly cared for the kids fired for no reason. Turnover is very high. The CEO promised improvements but they never came through. We had an election and won overwhelmingly! That showed us that by sticking together, working hard for our rights, and trusting in one another, we can win!” said Monica Sanders as workers celebrated the victory.
Locked-Out Caregivers Turn Up the Heat on HealthBridge’s Owners
Vigil image courtesy of nhregister.com
Back-to-back actions by locked-out caregivers and residents’ family members from HealthBridge’s West River Health Center in Milford, CT are making news headlines in Connecticut and New York. The New Haven Register reported on a candlelight vigil in Milford on Sunday, January 29th, where residents’ family members spoke out about their concern for their loved ones:
Rosemarie Civitello of Milford is worried about the well-being of her 82-year-old mother, Rosalie Russello…Russello suffers from Alzheimers and is a patient at HealthBridge Management’s West River Health Care facility…
“I’m majorly concerned,” Civitello said Sunday as she attended a candlelight vigil on the Green to raise awareness of the plight of the locked-out workers. More than 50 workers, residents and family members braved the cold and attended Sunday evening. “Things have plummeted horribly. The care has been affected,” Civitello said.
…She said patients have objected to the quality of the food, and are out of sorts after not seeing familiar faces working with them.
NYU action photo courtesy of LaborNotes.org
Two days later, workers and their supporters showed up at the gates of New York University’s Law School, where one of the HealthBridge owners, Daniel Straus, is a trustee. The action – which included street theater – garnered national coverage in Labor Notes as well as a story from campus news site NYULocal.com:
[Two] women stared each other down, slowly walking in a circle as they matched each other step for step. One, dressed in black from her cowboy hat and fake mustache down to her shoes, wore a paper badge labeled “99% Sheriff.” The other, a white cowboy hat, black Zorro-esque eye mask, and the label “1% Outlaw.” [...The] “99%” represented the many [locked-out] caregivers at a Milford, CT, nursing home…run by Daniel Straus, or “the 1%.” Straus, an NYU Law School Trustee, endows the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice with annual gifts of $1.25 million and owns six nursing homes in Connecticut, as well as many more in other states.
Yesterday afternoon, the workers…paid the NYU Law School a visit and put on a mock manhunt to illustrate the injustice being done by a man who financed a school for justice. As supportive professors and students, including members of GSOC and the Student Labor Action Project, gathered first in Washington Square Park and then in front of the entrance to the Law School, workers chanted “Down with Straus!” and held up signs renaming Straus’ namesake school the “Institute of Injustice.”
Caregivers, family members, and supporters are now planning their next steps to continue educating the public about HealthBridge’s corporate practices and call on the Straus brothers to “Be fair to those who care!”
Why CT Home Care Workers Are Uniting Together
Far too often, home care workers are forced to leave the consumers or loved ones we care for in order to find work that offers benefits, paid time off or more hours. For some consumers, the high turnover of the home care provider profession can get in the way of receiving the stable care they need. It’s a heart-wrenching decision for any caregiver to have to make, but the reality is that we cannot care for others if we cannot make a living that enables us to care for ourselves and our families.
Personal Care Attendants in 10 states have already united in SEIU Healthcare and worked together to make home care more stable and reliable for consumers. We’ve won paid sick time, paid days off, access to health insurance and increased wages — and we’ve partnered with consumers, family members, and advocates to ensure consistent, quality care and a care-delivery system where consumers remain empowered.
Now Connecticut home care workers are ready to join them. Click here to visit the “Home Care Workers United” webpage and learn more about the campaign.
If you are curious to learn about how SEIU works with consumers, you can hear directly from organizations and individuals in the disability advocacy community about their experience working with SEIU as a partner for dignity, empowerment and quality care by checking out the video below:
1199 Celebrates the Life and Legacy of MLK
As many of our members already know, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. often called District 1199 “my favorite union.” The special relationship between Dr. King and our union began in the late 1950s and early ‘60s when 1199 launched large organizing drives and strikes by NYC hospital workers. The movement to end the Vietnam War brought Dr. King even closer to 1199 – when we worked closely together to bring about peace.
Just weeks before his untimely death in 1968, Dr. King spoke to 1199 members (you can see a video of some of the speech below). He used the occasion to highlight how every employee of a health care facility is just as important as the physician in protecting patients’ health:
You see, no labor is really menial unless you’re not getting adequate wages. People are always talking about menial labor. But if you’re getting a good wage, as I know that through some unions they’ve brought it up…that isn’t menial labor. What makes it menial is the income, the wages.
His words are just as true today — as the gap between the richest 1% and the rest of us who belong to the 99% has only grown bigger. Let us reflect on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and legacy, and recommit ourselves in this new year to carry on the struggle for civil rights and equality at work and in society.
To hear more of Dr. King’s speech to 1199 members — together with footage of 1199 members in action — watch the video below: