Group home workers join nursing home employees in strike threat
As thousands of unionized nursing home employees in Connecticut prepare to strike next week, group home workers announced Friday evening that they too would walk off the job if they didn’t receive better pay and benefits.
SEIU 1199, which represents more than 2,000 group home workers who work with people who have intellectual or developmental disabilities, said it had delivered strike notices to six group home agencies, notifying them that if an agreement on a new contract is not reached by May 21 at 6 a.m., they would strike.
That’s on top of the 3,400plus SEIU 1199 members at 33 nursing homes, who are ready to strike starting on Friday, May 14 at 6 a.m. if they don’t reach a deal on a new contract.
“We’re going through strike preparations now,” said Pedro Zayas, spokesman for SEIU District 1199 New England. Together, the more than 5,000 workers voted to authorize strikes at a 98 percent rate, Zayas said.
The looming strike deadlines put the Connecticut state budget into the crosshairs, as the state pays a majority of costs at nursing homes though Medicaid, and pays for group homes for developmentally disabled people and residents with mental illness, among others. Private providers of these and other services for patients and clients of the state have for years received meager increases that have not kept pace with higher underlying costs.
Talks to avert the strikes are continuing
In nursing homes, the strike countdown comes as the state reported a week without any COVID-19related deaths among nursing home residents for only the second time since the pandemic began.
“We’re very thankful for that,” Lamont said during his coronavirus briefing Thursday. “Another example of vaccinations working.”
During the worst of the pandemic, nursing home and assisted living deaths accounted for more than 70 percent of Connecticut’s overall coronavirus-related fatalities. Currently, they make up just under 50 percent.
Conditions and pay during the pandemic, especially in the early months, are fueling support for the strike authorization by nursing home workers. State data shows that more than 4,900 nursing home workers have contracted COVID-19.
Zayas said 22 of SEIU’s members have died from COVID-19, including two group home employees, 15 nursing home workers and five employees in its state division.
Gov. Ned Lamont acknowledged Thursday that the state must do more to help nursing home employees who’ve been on the front lines of the pandemic.
“A lot of the money went to nursing homes, not as much as we wanted went to the front-line workers and those are the types of things we’re negotiating right now,” the governor said at his Thursday coronavirus briefing.
Federal and state funding has helped nursing home operators pay for personal protective equipment, COVID-19 testing of staff and residents and other safety measures, and hazard pay for workers.
Paul Mounds, the governor’s chief of staff, said the governor is focused on ensuring nursing home operators and the unionized workers “can get to an amicable agreement as it deals with their negotiations.”
Mounds, Melissa McCaw, the governor’s budget director and Dr. Deidre Gifford, acting public health commissioner, met with nursing home operators late last week and union representatives earlier in the week, he said.
The major sticking point in the negotiations, Zayas said, is that nursing home operators are looking at the governor’s two-year budget proposal and “saying there’s no money to raise wages and improve worker benefits in nursing homes so we cannot agree to a new contract.”
The Lamont administration is facing competing demands for increased funding at a time when the state is seeing healthy gains in tax revenues, is flush with federal coronavirus aid, and a $3.5 billion rainy day fund.
Matthew Barrett, president and CEO of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, which represents more than 140 nursing facilities, recently told the Connecticut Mirror that the nursing home industry needs an additional $312 million annually from the state to offset the revenue losses and increased costs that have resulted from the pandemic.
Barrett did not return requests for comment Friday from Hearst Connecticut Media Group.