Howard Brown Health workers poised for post-holiday walkout

Angered by planned job cuts, employees at LGBTQ+-focused facilities plan three-day strike

Nearly a month after employees at Howard Brown Health held a rally against proposed staffing cuts, unionized workers at the LGBTQ+ focused Chicago health care facilities say they’re ready to stage a three-day strike in early January.

In a Friday Instagram post, Howard Brown Health Workers United and the Illinois Nurses Association announced their members will walk off the job Jan. 3-5 over what they say are Howard Brown’s violations of the National Labor Relations Act, including “bargaining in bad faith.”

The groups claim the strike will bring more than 440 employees across 11 city locations — including nurses, specialists and even those at Brown Elephant thrift stores — onto the picket line after the holidays.

A strike vote was held in mid-December, and among 80% of union members who turned in ballots, 92% were in favor of the strike, according to the Howard Brown employees’ union.

The strike was then authorized for Jan. 3, the day Howard Brown Health plans to lay off 61 union members across 11 locations, according to Margo Gislain, the lead organizer with the Illinois Nurses Association’s Howard Brown Health Unit.

The cuts include all drug abuse case managers at South Side locations, members of the gender-affirming care team for youth and nearly all of the In Power team, which is dedicated to helping survivors of sexual assault and harassment navigate health care and legal systems.

Howard Brown Health has stated the layoffs are needed to bridge an estimated $12 million budget gap, which was attributed to changes in pharmaceutical legislation and the end of some COVID-19 assistance programs.

Representatives for Howard Brown Health didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.

Union leaders say they’ve seen no evidence of such dire financial straits.

“What is happening does not make sense with what their proposal is for this new facility,” Gislain said, referring to a $44 million Lake View facility currently under construction. “It’s very weird to cut staff by 60 and then immediately staff back up again in September.”

In March 2022, Howard Brown Health broke ground on that facility to replace one of its oldest offices, which closed in 2020. The initial plans had been set to include a staff of 100 by the 2023 opening, which would nearly double over time to accommodate dental offerings and an expansion of behavioral health care services, representatives for Howard Brown Health said when construction started. Union members say they’ve even seen job postings for positions that were on the layoff list.