The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Nursing home workers reject offer
Lamont asks CT National Guard to prepare to replace union staff in the event of a strike
A strike of thousands of nursing home workers seemed all the more likely Tuesday evening as the union representing them rejected a $280 million offer from the state to help the industry and struggling workers,
With less than three days before a 6 a.m. Friday walkout deadline at 33 nursing homes, the homes and state officials worked to ensure enough staff would be in place to care for affected residents.
Gov. Ned Lamont put National Guard troops on standby to help the state Department of Health supervise and to ensure contingency plans submitted by the nursing home operators are adequate.
To end a standoff and avert a strike, the Lamont administration on Monday announced a “historic” proposal, totaling $280 million, mostly in added Medicaid spending. The package would boost the nursing homes, which face big financial losses due to the pandemic, and workers, who are fighting for higher wages, benefits and staffing levels.
The spending package was “the best and final offer we would be presenting,” the govenor’s chief of staff, Paul Mounds, said Tuesday evening, repeating what he and budget director Melissa McCaw told SEIU District 1199, the union threatening the strike with 3,400 workers Friday. Another 600 workers at six additional homes have authorized a strike for May 28.
Less than an hour earlier, Rob Baril, president of District 1199, had issued a statement rejecting the package. Baril said the Lamont administration’s offer did not “provide the funding needed to right the wrongs of COVID-19 and to correct decades of chronic devaluation of the nursing home labor sector, whose workers are majority Black, Brown and White working-class women.”
The 4.5 percent wage increases for workers, which would total $150 million over next two years, “would not be sufficient to establish a $20 per hour minimum in the union contracts for certified nursing assistants,” Baril said, and “for hundreds of housekeeping, dietary and laundry support workers, the proposed raise would not even keep up with the state’s minimum wage laws.”
The nursing home industry also is demanding more money.
Matt Barrett, president and CEO of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, an association of 150 skilled nursing facilities and assisted living communities, said the industry needed $312 million immediately to cover increased costs due decreased occupancy during the pandemic — and historic Medicaid underfunding. Even that wouldn’t cover the costs to settle collective bargaining issues, he said.
Barrett pushed back against Mounds’ characterization of the $280 million proposal as the administration’s best and final offer, saying state lawmakers are still going through the appropriations process.
“Everyone should stay engaged in the appropriations process and stay at the bargaining table and stay on the job and do everything we can to avert a strike until there’s a final answer on appropriations,” he said by phone Monday night.
In addition to the $150 million for wages, Lamont’s proposal would temporarily boost the Medicaid reimbursement for nursing home operators by 10 percent for a total of $86 million; provide a one-time pension enhancement of $19.5 million, and appropriate $25 million in federal stimulus money for hazard pay and workforce development training.
Baril called the training and retirement proposals “completely inadequate for an impoverished workforce that carried the nursing home industry on its shoulders through an extremely dangerous public health emergency.”
“Workers have suffered untold trauma in the last year with thousands of resident deaths and nearly two dozen worker fatalities in our union,” he said.
The same day the administration presented the nursing home relief package, the governor authorized Major General Francis J. Evon Jr. to “immediately call up a sufficient force of members of the armed forces of the state” to support the state Department of Public Health’s response to a potential strike Friday.
The 50 National Guard troops would not replace the workers going on strike but help public health officials in their oversight of the 33 nursing homes that would be affected.
The contingency plans by nursing home operators included retaining temporary workers through staffing agencies, Deidre Gifford, acting Public Health commissioner, said Tuesday night. Her staff is following up with the agencies to ensure enough workers would be on site to care for nursing home residents if a strike occurs.
Barrett said the strike contingency plans submitted by nursing homes include entering into non-refundable replacement worker contracts to secure staffing if employees don’t show up to work. He said some workers could have to be flown in from other states, adding to the costs. Nursing homes are also responsible for transportation and lodging of replacement workers and other costs such as increased security.
“These increased costs would be paid for by state taxpayers under Connecticut’s Medicaid program,” he said.
In the event of a strike, DPH staff and National Guard personnel would be on site to monitor the replacement workers to ensure all safety protocols are followed, Gifford said. Nursing homes would be required to continue COVID-19 protocols, including testing and vaccinations.
Additional National Guard troops could be activated to help. Gifford said moving residents would be a last resort.
The workers threatening a strike include registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, certified nursing assistants, receptionists, dietary aides, housekeeping and laundry staff.
In addition to the nursing home employees, about 2,000 group home workers, also from SEIU District 1199, voted to authorize a strike effective May 21 — with many of the same issues as the nursing home workers.
About 4,000 residents live at the nursing homes subject to Friday’s strike, according to David Dearborn, a spokesman for the state Department of Social Services.