Cuts to backstretch clinic at race course shameful
In an article regarding the end of the 2018 meet at Saratoga Race Course (“Steamy season ends on high note,” Sept. 4), Chris Kay, New York Racing Association’s president and CEO, is quoted as saying: “Our team did a great job...performing day after day.”
Attendance was higher, the handle was the second highest ever and the 1863 Club, a new tony building for the swells, will be built at who knows what expense. And yet NYRA cut back its share toward the backstretch workers’ free health clinic from more than $1 million to a 2018 sum of $600,000. NYRA whined it was paying more to help fund the clinic than the New York Thoroughbred Horseman’s Association (“Funds sought for backstretch clinic,” Sept. 4). Do you believe that?
Once again, profits take precedence over the welfare of NYRA’S most precious asset: the backstretch workers. They have off one day a week, and work way more than eight hours a day in grueling jobs that not many people would do willingly. They travel back and forth, from track to track with no time to spare.
NYRA will help BEST (Best Employee Service Team), which manages the clinic, look for funding, but the fat cats don’t want to fork over enough money to provide decent, reliable health care for the workers.
This is unconscionable. Let’s hope our state government intervenes to rectify the appalling conduct of a group of 1-percenters who seem to care not one bit about the welfare of the lower 99 percent of us. It is only the money that matters.
Suzanne Aiardo Saratoga Springs