A nursing home in New York City cut off health benefits to it’s staff over last summer, and they have been on strike since February.

After three wearying months of walking the picket line, 220 nursing home workers at the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation and Care Center in the west Bronx have had plenty of time to sharpen their message.

“Health care workers like us should have health care coverage,” said Jacqueline Simono, who has worked for 10 years at the six-story, 400-bed nursing home.

In August, the nursing home stopped paying the workers’ health insurance premiums, and as a result, their coverage was cut off. That, the workers say, was the main reason they went on strike on Feb. 20.

The workers, members of 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, say they are expecting the National Labor Relations Board to give them some good news soon to help end the strike.

Sadly, those on strike are not earning any income and I cannot imagine how they are making ends meet right now. The costs of health care benefits is skyrocketing for everyone- not just health care workers. We’re seeing more and more businesses from every sector dropping coverages or increasing premiums.

Reading the rest of this article, it isn’t clear what’s really going on here. One thing: If these staff belong to a union, it is the unions’ job to make sure benefits are part of any bargaining plan. Somehow, somewhere, someone let the ball drop here.

I did a little digging into this situation and found a couple articles worth mention.

From a May 7th article:

NEW YORK–About 5,000 members of 1199SEIU from across the Northeast rallied May 3 to support 220 strikers at the Kingsbridge Heights Nursing Home, whose owner, Helen Sieger, has refused for six years to sign a contract with SEIU or pay into the 1199 health benefits fund.

The overwhelmingly immigrant strikers entered the rally at Fort Independence Park in a boisterous show of force, calling on a broad spectrum of militant national labor traditions.
[…]
Bartosz and Tomas, two strikers from Poland, described Helen Sieger’s anti-labor practices: “We have no sick days. We have no health benefits. We are required to arrive at 10:30, but are only paid from 11:00 on. Though we should finish at 7:00, we often have to work later, also without pay.”
[…]
A number of federal, state and city politicians and union officials spoke at the rally, including SEIU President Andy Stern and Sen. Charles Schumer. Barack Obama spoke through a recorded message. SEIU members from Albany and Rochester, N.Y., turned out, along with others from Massachusetts, New Jersey and the Washington-Baltimore area.

The rally highlighted the role that immigrants play in organized labor. A win for the Kingsbridge workers will be a victory for both the immigrant rights and labor movements.

There were not 5000 people at any rally for this. That is a gross exaggeration. Using militant strike methods wins few friends in these causes; however, asking politicians to speak on the behalf of those on strike is admirable.

The fact that many of those on strike are immigrants leads me to ask the tough question: Are they legally entitled to work in the US? Are these people just doing another job Americans won’t do? I wonder how many American CNA’s worked for this facility?

Finally, I ask this: If there is a strong union here, HOW do we explain such bad working “conditions” that include no sick days, not being paid for actual times worked, and so on? In many places of employment, meal breaks are not paid time. So, employees are expected to be on premises for 8 1/2 hours- eight of which are paid and the other that is not. And exactly how much longer were they made to stay over 7:00? A few minutes or hours? If minutes, then this issue is moot. If hours, then there is a serious problem. The devil is in the details, and we’re not getting those.

I also found the latest survey information for this facility. As usual, it doesn’t provide a clear picture of the facility, but all in all it isn’t THAT BAD. I have no doubt this place is a dungeon to work in; I also have little reason to believe the management gives one hoot about the workers. But my instincts tell me we’re not being given ALL the facts.

I ask people to be skeptical on these articles because the lack of detail can make a huge difference. A unionized nursing home should NOT have these issues. A union that has failed it’s members, however, might encourage a strike just to blow smoke in the air around it’s own failings and obscure the truth.

Fighting back:

OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ — SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West and SEIU Local 121RN have filed for injunctive relief seeking to stop Tenet Healthcare Corp. from cutting health benefits for nearly 7,000 California hospital employees, including registered nurses, pharmacists, licensed vocational nurses, respiratory care practitioners, radiology technicians, surgical technicians, and certified nursing assistants.

Workers represented by the two unions have been in negotiations with Tenet Healthcare for nearly a year. In June, Tenet and the workers reached an agreement on maintaining all health benefits and costs. Last week, however, Tenet changed their position and announced that they plan to cut benefits beginning in November, during the open enrollment period with PacifiCare, which administers the corporation’s health plan.

Once an agreement has been made it needs to be honored. Tenet is well known for pulling stunts like this. Again, these for profit centers are not worth the jobs they offer. Sooner or later, employees are screwed over.

SEIU members attended a rally, protesting the sale and terms of the recent sale of Manor Care nursing homes.

About 175 union activists rallied yesterday at the Washington headquarters of a private-equity group to protest the terms of its planned takeover of Toledo nursing home giant Manor Care Inc.

Chanting “Better staffing, better care, not more money for millionaires,” members of the Service Employees International Union marched into the lobby of the headquarters of Carlyle Group LP, said Andrew McDonald, a union spokesman.

The rally attendees were not met with open doors though.

But they were turned away when they tried to deliver a list of demands to officials of the multibillion-dollar investment group. “Today, we kicked off what is going to be a national effort around this Manor Care buyout,” the spokesman said.

Manor Care is one of the nation’s largest nursing-home operators, with 550 nursing homes and related facilities nationwide.

These kinds of protests are usually well received. Maybe the unions should think of a better way? I don’t think it would matter with Manor Care though- for them it IS all about profit.

Presenting two sides to the S-CHIP issue. We report. You all decide. And live with your choices without regard to how it all affects each and every one of us. And our children.

DO WHAT’S RIGHT FOR THE CHILDREN:

It’s September and that means it’s back to school for millions of children, and back to session for our Congress. There isn’t a healthcare advocate that I know who doesn’t realize that this session of Congress holds the healthcare and future welfare of almost 9 million children in their hands. It is a deeply disturbing fact that in this country, with all it’s wealth and innovation, we have children without access to consistent and comprehensive healthcare.

Many states have extended coverage to school-aged children through the States Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Yet there still are too many working families living in poverty or near poverty who can not afford health coverage.

Masschusetts is a state that has made covering kids a priority. But without a full appropriation of $50 billion, roughly 14,000 children in the Bay State will lose that coverage. Some of them were just covered by our health reform expansion, and now they are again in health insurance jeopardy. These are children living in families who earn between 250 - 300% FPL.

See here for how most Americans are living, in so called poverty.

More:

Without this funding for S-CHIP, chances are their parents will be in health insurance jeopardy as well.

That’s why late next week, hundreds of healthcare workers from SEIU Healthcare, traveling from many states across this country, will descend on Washington DC. They will go there to lobby members of Congress to keep their resolve and do the right thing by expanding funding of S-CHIP.

President Bush is waiting to veto this funding. He has already drawn a line in the sand. It is time for the voice of America’s children to be heard!

SEIU Healthcare workers from Jordan Hospital, Boston Medical Center and Union Hospital will advocate for our kids, bringing their petitions to add to the more than one million petition signatures that will be delivered to Congress.

Healthcare reform in Massachusetts will be forced to take a terrible step backward if the President vetoes this funding. In addition, as Massachusetts begins negotiating our new federal waiver to finance health reform, federal matching dollars may be at risk. The Bush administration may try to win these funding restrictions through rule-setting, holding our children and all of our reform efforts hostage to the Administration’s punitive policy.

And consider this:

Hospital CEOs and hospital workers, nursing home owners and nursing assistants all have this in common: we know that for healthcare reform to work, all of our kids must be insured!

If you haven’t signed the S-CHIP petition, please go to www.seiuhealthcare.org and sign it today. Do it for children throughout Massachusetts and throughout our country.

Celia Wcislo is a member of the Connector board
and Assistant Division Director, 1199 SEIU

The other side:

Every child in America should have access to health care. Thankfully, both the U.S. House and Senate have passed plans that would reauthorize and expand the federal Children’s Health Insurance Plan. But, funds to expand child health care should not come at the expense of America’s historical and fundamental commitment to our elderly. That’s exactly what happened in the House, where many members, including U.S. Rep. Charles W. Dent, were forced to choose between kids and the elderly when voting on House Bill 3162.

While the legislation contained the noble goal of expanding insurance for children, it also included many destructive components, including a provision to slash $2.7 billion in Medicare payments. Under that plan, nursing home residents in New Jersey and Pennsylvania would lose $210 million over five years.
[…]
In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where roughly 80 percent of nursing home residents have their care funded through Medicaid and Medicare, the cuts would hit especially hard and exacerbate an existing funding gap between what Medicaid will reimburse nursing homes for caring for residents. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where two out of three residents are funded through Medicaid, nursing homes lose an average of $13 and $21.25 per resident per day, respectively.
[…]
While nursing homes will strive to provide quality health care no matter what funding cuts come their way, they will be forced to scale back those activities and events that enhance residents’ quality of life. In addition, those who work within America’s nursing homes — predominantly women and many minorities — could find their wages and benefits affected by the cuts proposed in House Bill 3162.

Nursing homes already are struggling to attract and retain staff to care for elderly, ill and disabled residents because these positions involve high physical and emotional stress on employees who can find higher compensation in competing health-care settings. Right now, 100,000 long-term care nurse and nurse aide jobs remain vacant nationwide; annual turnover rates are high — 49 percent for registered nurses and 71 percent for certified nursing assistants.

Slashing Medicare payments would complicate the challenges that already face each and every one of the more than 175,000 nursing home employees in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who work long, demanding hours to care for those least able to care for themselves.
[…]
Sufficient funding of health-care services for children and the elderly is the only responsible solution. Playing off the future of children against the well-being of the elderly is not policy — it’s passing the buck.

Stuart H. Shapiro, M.D., is president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association. Paul R. Langevin Jr. is president of the Health Care Association of New Jersey.

Have the unions such as SEIU fully investigated this issue? Are they aware of the serious cutbacks to our elderly if this act is extended as is?

So which is it? Who gets the cut? The children of families who earn 300% above the poverty threshold, or the elderly- and those who care for them in jobs working as CNA’s? You decide.

One of the reasons elderly people, who can (and can’t) afford it, are moving to Mexican nursing homes (as in the post below) as opposed to American nursing homes, is because the costs of running the American nursing home. One of the biggest costs is always staff: Pay, benefits, insurances. So when we see more Unions come to these places, we expect to see costs skyrocket. It’s simple economics and it’s very much bad for the industry in whole. The big chains can cough up some money for pay and other staff needs; it’s the small locally owned and managed facilities that suffer, and end up closing doors.

So when I read News Releases like this, I have to ask: HOW ARE UNIONS BETTER for RESIDENTS? If more and more of them are seeking alternatives, including moving to another country, how can the unions make the claims they do?

DETROIT, Aug. 17 /PRNewswire/ – SEIU Healthcare Michigan, the state’s largest local health care union, was formed this week, the union’s leaders announced.

The new union will represent more than 55,000 healthcare workers statewide, including Registered Nurses, home care workers, nursing home aides and hospital support staff.

“SEIU Healthcare Michigan will be a champion for quality healthcare in Michigan,” said SEIU President Rickman Jackson. “Our members are on the front lines of the healthcare crisis in our state, and we’ll work endlessly to make sure all Michiganders have access to the healthcare they need.”

Access is one thing; the cost of it is quite another. And what do CNA’s and nurses have to do with making sure ALL of a state’s citizens have access??

The move coincides with the formation of SEIU Healthcare, a national union which represents 1 million members nationwide. The union’s agenda includes advocating for improvements in the health care system, including putting patients first, providing affordable care to every man, woman and child in America, ensuring long term care for the nation’s elderly and disabled population, and higher standards for pay, benefits, training and staffing for health care workers.

“We have similar goals for Michigan,” Jackson said, “as we know that many of our workers don’t have insurance or adequate coverage to address their needs. That’s why we have high turnover in the home health care field and certainly, a nursing shortage in Michigan.”

Jackson’s goals include affordable and adequate healthcare for nursing home and other healthcare workers; the creation of the state’s largest training center and creating a stronger voice for the professions his union represents.

“A quality work force equals quality care,” Jackson said.

Remember who is paying for nursing home care. Each and every one of us who pays federal taxes.

The customers are looking for alternatives. Culture change is happening and Eden type nursing homes are becoming more and more popular. The nurses and aides who work for these places have consistently rejected unions- and they don’t make any more money than the rest of us. Now we see elderly people going to Mexico and India for nursing home care; what next? We already know a great many people hire non nursing aides to come in and take care of their older loved ones- these families train these aides to do things their way…not our way.

We’re not taking the hint here. It’s time we change. Or the people who we think need us won’t- they are revolting now and demanding something better and cheaper. Can we go with this wave of change or will be go with the old model and join the unions and destroy our own line of work? Something to think about.

Here’s a twist: American elderly are going to Mexican nursing homes and assisted living facilities because the costs are far less than anything in the US…

AJIJIC, Mexico — After Jean Douglas turned 70, she realized she couldn’t take care of herself anymore. Her knees were giving out, and winters in Bandon, Ore., were getting harder to bear alone.

Douglas was shocked by the high cost and impersonal care at assisted-living facilities near her home. After searching the Internet for other options, she joined a small but steadily growing number of Americans who are moving across the border to nursing homes in Mexico, where the sun is bright and the living is cheap.

For $1,300 a month — a quarter of what an average nursing home costs in Oregon — Douglas gets a studio apartment, three meals a day, laundry and cleaning service, and 24-hour care from an attentive staff, many of whom speak English. She wakes up every morning next to a glimmering mountain lake, and the average annual high temperature is a toasty 79 degrees.

“It is paradise,” says Douglas, 74. “If you need help living or coping, this is the place to be. I don’t know that there is such a thing back (in the USA), and certainly not for this amount of money.

She’s right. Absolutely right.

What are some of the benefits of moving to Mexico?

Many expatriates are Americans or Europeans who retired here years ago and are now becoming more frail. Others are not quite ready for a nursing home but are exploring options such as in-home health care services, which can provide Mexican nurses at a fraction of U.S. prices.

Correct.

And:

Retirement homes are relatively new in Mexico, where the aging usually live with family. There is little government regulation….
[…]
Residents such as Richard Slater say they are happy in Mexico. Slater came to Lake Chapala four years ago and now lives in his own cottage at the Casa de Ancianos, surrounded by purple bougainvillea and pomegranate trees.

He has plenty of room for his two dogs and has a little patio that he shares with three other American residents. He gets 24-hour nursing care and three meals a day, cooked in a homey kitchen and served in a sun-washed dining room. His cottage has a living room, bedroom, kitchenette, bathroom and a walk-in closet.

For this Slater pays $550 a month, less than one-tenth of the going rate back home in Las Vegas. For another $140 a year, he gets full medical coverage from the Mexican government, including all his medicine and insulin for diabetes.

“This would all cost me a fortune in the United States,” said Slater, a 65-year-old retired headwaiter.

More than a fortune.

But there are some problems:

The U.S. Embassy said it had no record of complaints against Mexican nursing homes, but some residents in the Lake Chapala area reported bad experiences at now-defunct homes.

The first home that Jean Douglas lived in after she moved from Oregon was staffed by “gossips and thieves,” she said. It went out of business.

Irene Chiara of Los Angeles also lived in a home that was shut down by Jalisco state authorities.

“It was filthy, and the food was very bad. It was all made in the microwave,” she said.

Some Mexican managers also underestimate the costs and difficulty of running a retirement home. Two hotels turned into assisted-living facilities, The Spa in San Miguel de Allende and The Melville in the Pacific Coast city of Mazatlán, recently abandoned the business, their managers said.

“It was very expensive to run it,” said Luis Terán, manager of The Melville.

Some managers said they were especially selective when admitting foreign residents, to make sure they’ll be able to pay. Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Veterans Affairs and most U.S. insurance companies will not cover care or medicine as long as patients are outside the United States.

I wonder how many of these people are medically fragile? And how many will become so sooner than later, and what will come of their care needs? A lesson from this newer trend, for American nursing homes AND those who work for them: Keep an eye on costs. Unions which drive up wages and benefits might begin losing residents to Mexico. We’re already losing American aides with Mexican immigrants who take our jobs (at far less pay…) The free markets can fix all of this if we allow it. Too many regulations and third party players are ruining nursing homes.

As noted in the previous article posted here, nursing home operators figure out ways to circumvent the unionizing process, unions continue to battle onward.

A ruling in favor of healthcare workers in a 1999 strike at Avery Heights could force the nursing home to pay more than $4 million in back wages and benefits, labor leaders say.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled that Avery Heights violated federal labor by secretly hiring workers to permanently replace employees who were on strike.

It’s only a matter of time before these nursing homes seek alternative ways to retain staff. Ways in which they don’t have a part of the hiring, wage and benefit packages and other human resource issues.

A while ago here we ran a story about a nursing home that had been bought out by another company which promptly told all the staff they would have to re-apply for jobs. The staff affected belonged to a union. Here is an update:

STAMFORD - Nearly 30 Tandet Center union workers, backed by city and state officials and religious leaders, demanded contract assurances from the buyer of the nursing home at a news conference yesterday.

Stamford Health System’s long-sought $5.4 million sale of the Tandet Center to the newly formed Mill River Foundation Inc., based in Georgia, is expected to close by the end of the summer.

The nursing home employees, who are working under a temporary contract until the deal closes, said they face deteriorating working conditions, cuts in health insurance and pensions, and possible loss of jobs.

“We just need assurances,” said Merlene Reynolds, a nursing assistant at Tandet Center for 13 years. “Give us something.”
[…]
Mill River plans to contract with a for-profit HP sister company, AltaCare Corp., to manage daily operations, such as payroll, billing, collections and human resources.

The company is holding a job fair today at the Holiday Inn, which nursing home workers said is open to the public and advertising positions held by union members.

Douglas Mittleider, chief executive officer, chief financial officer and secretary for HP Acquisitions Group and AltaCare, said the job fair is for Tandet Center employees, but outside applications will be accepted.

“We’re looking for qualified people,” he said. “We are not advertising to the public.”

All 180 employees of the 130-bed William and Sally Tandet Center for Continuing Care must reapply for their jobs. Those who pass the drug testing and criminal background checks will be offered jobs with Mill River at their existing pay rates and will retain their seniority, Mittleider said. Employees will continue to be offered health benefits, paid time off and a retirement savings plan, he said.

Although the temporary contract will not be honored, Mittleider said he will work with the union if representation is in place when the employees have been determined.

I wouldn’t trust this at all. The company is going to outsource it’s entire staffing operation, which means an outside group will actually hire and maintain records for, pay, insure and all other human resource related issues…the nursing home itself will not have any say in these areas. Of course they will have a say in the employee’s work ethics and standards and performance. As for the union: Don’t trust these words this man is saying. This is the new way of things. Outsourcing the jobs to small time hiring groups who have no vested interest in unions and who don’t hire people in one industry. Since the nursing home staff don’t actually work for the nursing home, they won’t be able to collectively bargain anymore. They won’t be able to convince non nursing employees, such as a factory worker on the other end of town, to join a nursing union and vice versa. Very clever thing happening here. I predict this to go nationwide very soon too. Unions lose out. We lose out because we allowed unions to demand too much and look where it gets us all…no where.

Tension between residents and unions:

The residents themselves are unhappy about the labor tension, said Donald Gerber, 76, president of the resident council. Gerber said the employees are not nursing-home workers - the facility offers independent living and some skilled care - so it’s not fair for them to expect comparable wages.

Besides, he said, the retirement home doesn’t accept Medi-Cal, so the 400 residents are paying rent from their own savings and pensions. The monthly rents are in the $2,000 to $4,000 range, Gerber said.

“If the prices go up much more here, we’ll be forced to move out of O’Connor Woods and get an apartment somewhere,” said Gerber, a former Corte Madera resident who moved to Stockton because of the costs at Bay Area retirement homes. “The union could easily put O’Connor Woods out of business. There are only 400 people paying the bills. The union doesn’t get that.”

Now this is just plain sad, that residents have to live with fear because of union/employer politics and tactics. I truly believe unions serve no good purpose anymore.

A nursing home in CT is asking the state for permission to close it’s operation. Employees face losing their jobs and have made some noise about this.

More than a dozen workers at the Darien Health Care Center rallied outside the facility last Friday to protest the possible closing of the nursing home, and to appeal for the state to help.

“We are concerned about these workers and residents,” said Rev. Dr. Anthony Gibson of the Calvary Baptist Church in Darien. “We want to make sure everyone gets a fair shake.”

On April 3, the owner of the nursing home, HealthBridge, announced it had applied to the Connecticut Department of Social Services for permission to close the facility. Darien Health Care Center, located at 599 Post Road, is the only nursing home in the town.

In its request, HealthBridge cited operating losses as a reason for seeking to close the facility.

It’s not a cheap venture- running a nursing home. SO many seem to think it is; and far too many people claim that nursing home owners make huge profits. Some of bigger chains do manage to do that. But not the small chains and certainly not locally owned homes.

Though the company has not been granted permission by the department to close, it has already begun transferring patients and informed staff they will be laid off on or about May 18. The nursing home has more than 100 employees.

“At least the workers have the union to speak for them, the patients don’t have anyone,” said Service Employees International Union Political Organizer Stacey Zimmerman.

The workers are members of the New England Health Care Employees Union.

Union? I don’t suppose it has anything to do with this nursing home closing.

A worker who identified herself as Linda said, “This should not be about profit. We cannot keep throwing them (residents) out like yesterday’s garbage.”

Uh huh…and would Linda and her co-workers- who care so much for these residents, be willing to give up the union in order to keep the nursing home open? Have they offered to do this, to management? I suspect the answer would be NO. And No again.
Until they’re willing to do this, I would advise them to stop mentioning who is tossing the residents into the garbage here- and look in the mirror for the answer.