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Nursing home workers strike over unfair labor practices

Posted on October 21, 2020October 21, 2020 by Ariana Taylor

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Workers at the Four Seasons Rehabilitation and Nursing home on Monday walked off the job over what they called unfair labor practices during a pandemic.

Essential workers at the home off Newburgh Road say they are working without a contract and without enough personal protective equipment to stay safe. They also want better staffing levels and higher wages.

Workers at Four Seasons Rehabilitation and Nursing walk off the job Monday morning, stating unfair labor practices, in Westland, Michigan on October 19, 2020.

After agreeing to hold off striking for 30 days in August, it’s now back on, they said.

The home is part of a chain where workers represented by the SEIU Healthcare Michigan union are negotiating a contract.

“Governor Whitmer said it best: ‘With COVID-19 cases in Michigan on the rise, we cannot allow our most vulnerable patients to lack vital care.’ But nursing home owners have refused to come to an agreement that would equip us to provide the care our residents deserve,” said Carolyn Cole, a worker at the home, in a statement released by the union.

“We’re going on strike because if our workplace isn’t up to standard, it’s the residents who suffer.”

The nursing homes involved in the effort include the Charles Dunn chains. Calls to them were not returned Monday.

Ciena Healthcare and Villa Healthcare facilities are not included in the strike and reached an agreement with union members last week, the facilities said on Monday.

At 6 a.m., a group of workers gathered along Newburgh Road to march and chant. Workers inside the building walked off the job to join the picket line. A Facebook live video shows workers as they marched in the dark.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, showed her support for the workers by making an appearance at the strike, tweeting: “The intimidation & racially-charged bullying is disgusting & must stop. Workers deserve a contract.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=detroitnews&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1318206599610159105&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.detroitnews.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fwayne-county%2F2020%2F10%2F19%2Fnursing-home-workers-strike-over-unfair-labor-practices%2F3706738001%2F&siteScreenName=detroitnews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

Workers protested in shifts, planning to stay outside of the nursing home until 6 p.m. Monday. Workers say they will continue to strike until a deal is made.

“We’re here until it starts snowing if he doesn’t give us a deal,” said Ken Haney, the executive vice president of SEIU.

Haney said the union and Dunn were in negotiations until 10 p.m. Sunday, but talks ended when Dunn refused to give in to the workers’ demands.

Some of those demands include better health care and more premium coverage, and increased wages for the certified nursing assistants, who say they’ve had to do more work during the pandemic.

“We’ve all just been working all over the place and we’re just tired. He can’t keep staff because of the pay … but you’ll have me as a CNA doing a two- to three-person job, and it’s not right,” said Iyone Pruiett, a CNA at Four Seasons Nursing Home.

Haney said Dunn is violating the union contract by direct bargaining and offering members an extra $1.25 a day to not strike.

“He’s creating violations against the National Labor Relations Act, against the contract by implementing wages without negotiating with the unions, changing working conditions without negotiating with the unions,” Haney said. “We’re still willing to go to the table, but it has to be on the terms and conditions that these employees, these members are saying they want.”

As the pandemic hit Michigan earlier this year, workers inside some of the state’s hardest hit nursing homes rationed protective gear, went without COVID-19 tests and struggled to care for seniors who carried a deadly virus.

Mashala Pate with SEIU, Service Employees International Union, on the sidewalk in front of the Four Seasons Rehabilitation and Nursing where workers have walked out stating unfair labor practices in Westland, Michigan on October 19, 2020.

About a third of the 21 nursing homes that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration selected to care for elderly individuals with COVID-19 at the pandemic’s peak appear not to meet new quality standards under a revamped policy.

On Sept. 30, Whitmer announced an executive order to establish “care and recovery centers” to replace her “regional hubs,” existing nursing homes across the state tapped to care for people with the virus who are discharged from hospitals or reside in facilities that can’t properly isolate them.

The Legislature and Whitmer are still working out details and trying to come to an agreement. Whitmer’s handling of nursing homes has been a topic of heated debate for months. About 32% of Michigan’s 6,781 COVID-19 deaths have been nursing home residents, according to state data.

A sign on the side door of Four Season Rehabilitation and Nursing where workers have walked off the job, stating unfair labor practices in Westland, Michigan on October 19, 2020.

In Detroit, where the COVID-19 virus has devastated communities of color and the majority of nursing home workers are Black women, workers aim to draw attention to racial justice disparities inherent to their fight.

“COVID-19 just reinforced what the Black women who work in nursing homes have always known — these homes put profits over people,” said Izella Hayes, a worker at Imperial Nursing Home in Dearborn Heights, in a statement.

“As long as owners continue to treat us like we’re expendable instead of the heroes we are, we’ll continue to stand up for what’s right: a living wage so we can afford to get healthcare just like we provide it, and proper safety protocols and guaranteed PPE throughout the pandemic.”

This blog originally appeared at The Detroit News on October 19, 2020. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Ariana Taylor is a breaking news reporter with The Detroit News.

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Detroit Teachers Are Determined To Stop This Legislation. Here’s Why.

Posted on May 11, 2016May 11, 2016 by Casey Quinlan

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Detroit teachers are organizing to prevent a bill from passing the state legislature that they say would underfund schools and limit teachers’ rights.

There are two competing bills in the legislature aimed at resolving Detroit Public Schools’ current financial mess. The school system was at risk of going bankrupt because school officials said the district was “running out of money” in April, but the state provided $48.7 million in emergency funding to keep the district running. Now, as the end of the school year approaches, there are questions about long-term solutions.

Teachers were told that unless the legislature agrees on a restructuring plan to deal with the school district’s enormous debt, they won’t be paid after June, and summer school may not run. In response, hundreds of teachers called in sick at once, closing more than 90 schools. On Tuesday of last week, the teachers union, Detroit Federation of Teachers, said they would goback to work after assurance from Judge Steven Rhodes, the district’s emergency manager, that they would be paid.

Last week, the state house passed a a package of bills early in the morning — 4:30 a.m., to be exact — to split the district in half and allocate $500 million to pay off its operating deficit. But teachers are concerned about aspects of the House legislation. The legislation doesn’t recognize bargaining units, would impose penalties for going on strike or staging walkouts, would give the district power to hire noncertified teachers, and would tie teacher pay to test scores. The House also did not propose returning local control to the district, meaning there would be an appointed school board. The Detroit Financial Review Commission would choose the superintendent of the district.

The state senate’s proposal, on the other hand, would provide $715 million in funding and would introduce a commission to regulate public schools, which would oversee where traditional public schools and charter schools are located. State senators are pushing for $200 million loan instead of $33 million for transition costs, which is the same amount suggested by Gov. Rick Snyder (R). Mayor Mike Duggan (D) also supports the commission and says the $500 million isn’t enough.

Some Democratic lawmakers argue that allocating as little as $33 million means the legislature would be passing legislation to provide more money in a few months anyway.

“I don’t think we want to be in a situation where we pass a sum of money and then two or three months later we’re right back in front of the Legislature asking for more,” Sen. David Knezek (D)told the Associated Press.

To raise awareness and pressure lawmakers to pass the Senate bill instead of the one advancing in the House, teachers are going door-to-door all over the state in the hope that more widespread opposition to the legislation will help to stop it in its tracks. Detroit teachers and the American Federation of Teachers are also meeting with state lawmakers who may be on the fence about how to approach the school district’s finances, according to WXYZ, a local television station in Detroit.

Detroit teachers and students are also running lemonade stands to raise $500 for a federal audit of Detroit Public Schools because DPS emergency manager Steven Rhodes said the state and district don’t have the money for it.

Questions have been raised around DPS’ financial management recently, especially after 12 current and former Detroit principals, a Detroit Public Schools vendor of school supplies, and an assistant superintendent were brought up on federal corruption charges for a school supplies scheme involving kickbacks and bribes.

The legislation opposed by teachers unions could come to the Senate floor as soon as Thursday.

This blog originally appeared at Thinkprogress.org on May 10, 2016. Reprinted with permission.

Casey Quinlan is an education reporter for ThinkProgress. Previously, she was an editor for U.S. News and World Report. She has covered investing, education crime, LGBT issues, and politics for publications such as the NY Daily News, The Crime Report, The Legislative Gazette, Autostraddle, City Limits, The Atlantic and The Toast.

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Detroit firefighters and police face pension cuts with no safety net. Not even Social Security.

Posted on August 14, 2013August 14, 2013 by Laura Clawson

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Losing a pension you’ve worked years to earn is a nightmare scenario, one that can change a comfortable, secure retirement into one filled with worries and penny-pinching as Social Security goes from being part of your retirement income to all of it. For public workers in many places, including firefighters and police in Detroit, it’s a doomsday scenario, because they don’t get Social Security at all.

About 30 percent of public employees nationwide aren’t covered by Social Security; government workers weren’t covered by the program at its inception and while many have been moved under its umbrella over the years, some cities, towns, and states continue to run pension plans that don’t include Social Security. Detroit’s firefighters and police are in that group:

Of the nearly 21,000 city retirees now collecting pensions, 9,017 retired police officers, firefighters or their surviving spouses don’t get Social Security, or about 44 percent of all city pensioners.

For those who have worked in other jobs for long enough to qualify for Social Security, those benefits are reduced by a percentage of their Detroit pension. That’s not a lavish pension, by the way: The average annual police pension in Detroit is $30,000, compared with $58,000 in Los Angeles, $47,000 in Dallas, and $42,000 in Kansas City. And public workers’ pensions, unlike the pensions of many private sector workers, aren’t insured by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, meaning if they lose their Detroit pensions, that’s it, there’s no safety net to catch them.

What we’re talking about here are workers who spent decades earning less than they might have elsewhere in exchange for the promise of a secure—though not lavish—retirement. And now they face the very real threat of being left with a small fraction of what they earned and need to live on. They kept their promises to the city of Detroit. It must keep its promises to them.

This article originally posted on Daily Kos Labor on August 12, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laura Clawson is the labor editor at Daily Kos

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Fast Food Strikes Catch Fire

Posted on July 30, 2013 by David Moberg

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Early this morning, fast food workers in New York, St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo. launched strikes demanding both a wage increase to $15 an hour—from a median of $8.94—and the right to form unions without employer interference.

Later this week, workers in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and Flint, Mich., will also go out on strike, expanding the reach of the movement of fast food workers (and, in Chicago, retail workers) that started with protests in New York and Chicago last year and grew into a series of one-day strikes throughout 2013. In Flint and Kansas City, strikes are taking place for the first time; in other cities, strikes will expand to target new franchises.

Organizers anticipate that thousands of fast food workers will join in the strikes, which coincide with heightened public awareness of wage stagnation and economic inequality. Some strikers may stay out longer than a single day.

The fast food strikes are part of a broader movement by low-wage workers for higher pay and union representation that has caught fire over the past year.

Targets include a range of employers, including Wal-Mart, federal subcontractors, warehouses, retail stores and car washes. Workers have typically formed loose local organizing committees that, with financial and logistical support from unions and community groups are growing into national networks, most prominently OUR Walmart.

This low-wage service and retail worker movement has tapped into a vein of discontent. But it has also created hopes for change through the fledgling campaign’s remarkable success with imaginative tactics.

“I’ve always dreamt about a moment like this,” says Terrance Wise, a 34-year old fast food worker and father of three in Kansas City. “But what am I going to do by myself? There’s strength in numbers. It’s a beautiful thing, a positive thing, that’s going to change this country. … My job should be a good job.”

Although he works long hours at his two part-time jobs—8 years at Burger King (now for $9.35 an hour) and 2 years at Pizza Hut (for $7.45)—and his wife also has a low-wage job as a home healthcare aide, Wise struggles to make ends meet. He recently lost his house to foreclosure and had to move in with relatives.

Overall conditions in the industry have not changed as a result of the movement, but some workers have won improvements. In Chicago, organizers say, workers at some McDonald’s and Macy’s locations received modest pay increases after the April strike. Dock worker Andrew Little, 26, said that managers raised pay from $9 to $11.26 an hour for him and his coworkers after they participated in the Chicago strike.

“I was honestly shocked,” he said. “We told ourselves it wouldn’t happen overnight. My first thought was the strike really did have an effect.” But Little remains focused on his “main goal”: to form a union. “We want both a raise and to sit down with management and talk about how we can better serve the store and the store can better serve us,” he says.

As happy as he is with his raise, he is especially pleased that no striker was fired or disciplined. “That’s the best part,” he said. Like other strikers, he returned to work accompanied by supporters—a dozen community representatives, clergy and organizers—who insisted that he should not suffer any retaliation. Workers have a real fear of being fired, Little says, but that can be prevented “if enough of us all stand up and demand respect.”

Not all employers responded positively, at least not at first. After strikes in St. Louis in May, some participating workers lost hours, pay, shifts or promised transfers, according to Jobs With Justice leader Rev. Martin Rafanan. But Jobs With Justice delegations went to the restaurants and talked with managers, corporate representatives or even, in one case, the corporate general counsel. “All of the cases were resolved in favor of the workers by the well-coordinated responses of community leaders,” he says.

There’s only one documented case of a striker being fired during this year’s wave of fast food job actions: Greg Reynoso, from a Brooklyn Domino’s. Fast Food Forward, the New York branch of the movement, responded by making his employer the first target of the current strike. On Friday, organizers report, 14 of 15 Domino’s delivery drivers did not show for work, effectively shutting down the operation on its busiest night. Meanwhile, roughly 60 supporters, including U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), gathered outside the Domino’s to protest Reynoso’s dismissal.

The actions come at a time when issues of inequality and the minimum wage have taken the national stage. President Obama is on tour giving high-profile speeches on economic inequality, and a Hart Research poll shows that 80 percent of the public supports the proposal by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.35 to $10.10 in three steps.

Fast-food workers’ poverty wages were spotlighted last week when everyone, from Stephen Colbert to The Atlantic, made sport of McDonald’s for unintentionally debunking its own claims that it provides a living wage. A model budget McDonald’s created for its workers recommended holding two jobs (which is tricky with fast-food jobs, which require workers to be available on-call) and included nothing for heating, far less for health insurance than the cheapest McDonald’s plan, and other fantasies. Implicitly, the budget showed what strikers know: it’s hard to make ends meet on less than $15 an hour.

This article originally appeared on Working in These Times on July 29, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: David Moberg is a senior editor of In These Times, and has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing in 1976.

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Banking On Bankruptcy: Emails Suggest Negotiations With Detroit Retirees Were Designed To Fail

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Alan Pyke

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Even before one of their own was appointed emergency manager of the city, lawyers who were consulting with Michigan officials over the winter believed Detroit should move into bankruptcy proceedings that would free the city to walk away from its commitments to retirees. Emails between Kevyn Orr — now Detroit’s emergency manager but at the time an attorney for the law firm Jones Day — and his colleagues show the lawyers believed moving directly to bankruptcy would be better for the city than going through a serious negotiating process.

In one email, an assistant to Gov. Rick Snyder (R) promises to set a meeting between Orr and someone “who is not FOIAble,” suggesting an intent to evade transparency laws. In another, Jones Day lawyers suggest to Orr that elevating Detroit’s bankruptcy in national media coverage would “give you cover and options on the back end to make up for lost time there.” Orr rejected that suggestion as unhelpful. Jones Day continues to represent Detroit in the proceedings, which could take a year or longer.

The messages made public thusfar show Jones Day attorneys defining bankruptcy as inevitable in their own words.

“It seems that the ideal scenario would be that Snyder and Bing both agree that the best option is simply to go through an orderly Chapter 9 [bankruptcy],” one Jones Day attorney writes to Orr in the emails. “Appointing an Emergency Manager, whose ability to actually do anything is questionable given the looming political and legal fights, would only serve to kick the can down the wrong path and unreasonably delay any meaningful resolution of Detroit’s problems.” Defining bankruptcy as the only route to a “meaningful resolution of Detroit’s problems” casts further doubt on the intent of the negotiations that followed Orr’s appointment in March, but a spokesman for Orr called those doubts “absurd.”

The emails were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Robert Davis, a local labor activist with a troubled history. Davis faces federal corruption charges over school board funds that were spent on an advertising campaign. When the charges were filed in 2012,Davis called them politically motivated and said he is innocent.

One January exchange shows Orr reluctant to take on the emergency manager job, and concerned that the law empowering Gov. Rick Snyder (R) to appoint such officials “is a clear end-around the prior initiative that was rejected by the voters in November.” One January 31, Orr wrote that the entire emergency manager system “appears to merely adopts [sic] the conditions necessary for a chapter 9 filing.”

Orr’s assessment of the emergency manager process reinforces retiree advocates’ arguments that Orr’s actions once appointed were not good-faith negotiations with city employees, but an effort to check necessary boxes prior to filing for bankruptcy. In June, when Orr issued a proposal to retirees and bondholders in lieu of declaring bankruptcy, analysts wrote that the proposal appeared designed to be unpalatable, paving the way for the bankruptcy filing. Orr and Snyder have made clear that the bankruptcy resolution will include some cuts to retiree benefits, which are about $1,600 per month for most of the city’s 21,000 pensioners. “They made me some promises, and I made them some promises,” 76-year-old retired police sergeant William Shine told the New York Times. “I kept my promises. They’re not going to keep theirs.”

Some legal hurdles may prevent the city from reneging on pension promises in bankruptcy, but the outlook is uncertain.

This article originally posted on ThinkProgress on July 23, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Alan Pyke is the Deputy Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org. Before coming to ThinkProgress, he was a blogger and researcher with a focus on economic policy and political advertising at Media Matters for America, American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, and PoliticalCorrection.org.

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Workplace Fairness

Tag: Detroit

Nursing home workers strike over unfair labor practices

Detroit Teachers Are Determined To Stop This Legislation. Here’s Why.

Fast Food Strikes Catch Fire

Banking On Bankruptcy: Emails Suggest Negotiations With Detroit Retirees Were Designed To Fail

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