Nicole Leonard / Connecticut Public Radio
A health care workers union is delaying their strike plans at seven nursing homes while it continues to negotiate for more state funding for the long-term care industry and its workforce.
Thousands of New England Health Care Employees Union District 1199, SEIU members are still threatening to walk off the job Friday if their demands for better wages and benefits are not met – union leaders say there’s been some progress with state leaders, but not enough to meet their goals.
“We are not there yet, although we remain in dialogue with all parties and hopefully we can achieve the funding standards that are necessary to move people up,” said Rob Baril, union president. “This workforce is, frankly, too often ignored.”
Tim Rasmussen / Connecticut Public
A labor union representing Connecticut health care workers notified six group home agencies Friday evening that more than 2,000 employees are prepared to walk off the job later this month.
Union workers are demanding wage increases, better benefits, and solutions to staffing shortages in contract negotiations with agency owners and operators.
“If you can see me get up every day and go to work, and you don’t offer any insurance that’s affordable, you don’t offer us a pension – to give 25 years and not have a pension is a slap in the face,” Jennifer Brown said. “I‘m tired and I’m fed up, and enough is enough.”
By Liese Klein
During ordinary times in the nursing home industry, 101 empty beds out of a total of 357 would be a major crisis.
But executives of Masonicare, the Wallingford-based nonprofit conglomerate that runs Masonicare Health Center, see the low occupancy rate it reported on March 1 which mirrors industrywide trends during the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity.
Masonicare asked the Department of Social Services earlier this year for a permanent reduction in beds at its skilled nursing facility, from 357 to 260, a loss of 97 beds.
If the request is approved, Masonicare will reduce the bed count at its Wallingford nursing home by converting all of the four-person rooms to double rooms – and many of the double rooms to single rooms. Would-be residents want private rooms and more space allows for greater patient safety, said Masonicare President and CEO Jon-Paul Venoit.
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Twice this week, unionized workers have shut down streets around the capitol in protest of Gov. Ned Lamont’s state budget plans.
Most recently, long-term care workers and members of New England Health Care Employees Union District 1199, SEIU staged a picket Thursday afternoon outside the state Office of Policy and Management in Hartford.
They demanded that the state provide more funding for better wages and benefits that reflect their roles on the front-lines of the pandemic in nursing facilities, home care, and group homes.
“We are so invisible, we are so voiceless to them,” union president Rob Baril said into a bull horn, “that they can’t find money to pay people who have suffered, who have bled, you have comforted the ill and who understand every day what it is to fight to make Black and brown lives matter, to make the lives of the elderly and the sick matter.”
Workers are demanding what they call a living wage, as well as retirement options and paid time off.
“We need more pay. We need health insurance. We need a lot of respect,” said Angel Hawes, a long-term care worker.
DSS says it doesn’t regulate wages and benefits.
But it has increased reimbursements for Medicaid enrollees and provided millions in extra pandemic-related support which included pay increases for some workers.
It points out private and non-profit nursing homes sometimes negotiate with staff through collective bargaining.
The New England Health Care Employees Union District 1199, SEIU says the workers’ contracts run out on Monday.