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Sue Sulham has been caring for developmentally disabled people in the Blackstone Valley for more than 20 years. She makes just $11.20 an hour.
“I don’t want to live beyond my means,” Sulham said. “I just want to be able to make a payment on time, to go grocery shopping and maybe luncheon meat would be nice … instead of peanut butter and jelly. I’d be able to live better if I could have $15.”
It can be too easy to forget that real Rhode Islanders have to live on the low wages that some of us only know about in abstract political terms. But Sulham now has a way to tell us about her plight.
SEIU 1199NE, the union that represents Sulham and about 4,000 other health care workers in Rhode Island, is producing video testimonials of local workers who are struggling to get by on their current incomes. Sulham’s is the first:
The videos coincide with state leaders considering making huge cuts to the state Medicaid program. “Our view is that Medicaid investments should be directed towards high-quality frontline care and towards ensuring that no health care worker is living in poverty,” said SEIU 1199NE Executive Vice-President Patrick J. Quinn. “It’s time that our society shows that we truly value the work that our caregivers do each day.”
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“We were inspired to see fast food workers from around the country fighting for $15 an hour. We thought, if they can go for it, we can too,” said Maria Zigas, a patient information coordinator at BVCHC. “So we stood together and we won a really great contract so that we can provide for our families with dignified wages. Every worker should join the Fight for $15.”
According to an SEIU press release, “the vast majority of employees to over $15/hour by January 2017, as well dramatically reducing the cost of family health care for the lowest paid workers.”
The BVCHC employees also negotiated for tuition assistance, increased power in creating their own schedules and more flexibility in using sick days.
BVCHC has been expanding recently, capitalizing on the increase in business the health care provider has received under Obamacare. To meet demand the company has constructed of a new building in downtown Pawtucket for nearly $7 million and purchased another building for $1.4 million in late 2014. The number of patients served by the company has increased to over 15,000.
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About 150 Women & Infants hospital staff and supporters engaged in an informational picket outside the hospital yesterday on icy sidewalks in a flurry of snow. The picket was held, says Patrick Quinn, executive vice president of District 1199 SEIU New England, (1199 SEIU) to inform the public of two concerns.
The first is that excessive executive salaries at Care New England, (CNE) the Massachusetts based management company that runs Women & Infants, are negatively impacting patient satisfaction. The second concern is about “travel nurses,” out-of-state temps, being hired over qualified local nurses.
Regular readers may remember the travel nurses issue being raised back in June of last year. Travel nurses are temporary employees that allow hospital management to avoid new hires and promotion within the ranks. Travel nurses arrive from out-of-state and take most of their earnings out of state with them when they leave. Travel nurses miss out on the orientation regular staff receive, resulting in more mistakes for the regular staff to correct.
Patient satisfaction has been down since 2011, says 1199 SEIU citing Press Ganey, “an independent auditor that tracks patient satisfaction.” Perhaps not coincidentally 2011 is the near Care New England brought CEO Dennis Keefe on board. 1199 SEIU maintains that Keefe’s salary doubled after his first year and now tops $1 million. Meanwhile, funding for hospital staff and patient care is shrinking.
“These folks think that this is their personal piggy bank,” says Patrick Quinn, “management has embarked on a whole scheme of things to basically cut costs, reduce staffing, increase workloads and frankly, we’re sick of it.”
Care New England has not responded to a request for comment.
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An all day picket was held at Women & Infants Hospital yesterday to call attention to the problem of temporary, out-of-state “travel nurses” filling scheduling holes than hiring in-state nurses graduating from one of the many fine colleges offering nursing degrees in Rhode Island.
“There are many qualified graduates from our numerous nursing programs looking for jobs,” said Patrick Quinn, executive vice president of 1199 SEIU New England, “so it baffles me that Care New England management would take advantage of all the tax breaks of a non-profit but not give back to the community when we have such a high unemployment crisis.”
Care New England is the company presently managing Women & Infants.
Hiring travel nurses means that the salaries leave the state when the nurses are done. There are no savings in terms of wages as travel nurses make two and three times the standard rate of pay. Further, all full-time permanent nurses are given weeks of in house training and orientation that the temporary travel nurses skip. They are simply plugged into scheduling holes without any real orientation or training in hospital specific policies. This creates even more work for the regular staff, who spend time correcting the mistakes of the travel nurses.
Given these issues, why use travel nurses? To avoid hiring more union workers, of course.
This is just another example of a company engaging in dangerous, impractical strategies to avoid treating workers with respect and dignity. Even as the ACA funnels millions of new dollars into the health care industry, private companies, eager to squeeze ever more profits for their shareholders and overpaid CEOs, take shortcuts at the expense of their staff and patients.
My wife and I went to Women and Infants over 20 years ago to have our three children. The experience was top notch, and the nurses were fabulous. To think that the new management might threaten the reputation of such a fine hospital by playing games with the quality of the staff is appalling. As Wendy Laprade, a Registered Nurse in the Labor and Delivery Room said, “Women & Infants… will only remain the premier women’s hospital in Southern New England if we hire and train the next generation of RN’s.”
With all the talk surrounding a new nursing school being built in Rhode Island, and knowing that there will be a huge demand for nurses as the population ages over the next decade, Care New England’s policy decisions seem extremely short-sighted and counterproductive. Currently there are 30-35 traveling nurses estimated to be working at Women & Infants. This Pro Publica piece from 2009 highlights some of the dangers these policies exacerbate.
Supporting the union effort at Women & Infants were several other unions, as well as gubernatorial candidate Clay Pell and many other candidates for office. Also out in full support of the union’s efforts were three of the four hunger strikers, Shelby Maldonado, Mirjaam Parada and Yilenny Ferrares, and other hotel workers who worked so hard for a living wage in Providence, only to be cut down by backroom dealings in the General Assembly.
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Congratulations to the 500 child care providers who voted overwhelmingly to join a union this week! Early unofficial tallies say the vote was 390 with just 19 people opposed.
Rhode Island’s more than 500 independently-employed and publicly-subsidized child care providers join their counterparts in Massachussetts and Connecticut – and a total of 15 states across the country – in having the right to bargain for better working conditions as a group. These providers take care of the children of parents who in Rhode Island make less than about $40,000 and qualify for child care assistance so that they can work.
The campaign to organize these workers, most of whom make about $20,000 annually, has been a long, and hard-fought victory for the SEIU 1199, the group that organized the campaign and will represent the workers.
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