Following a coordinated series of one-day strikes earlier this summer, workers at seven Western New York nursing homes have secured new contracts, but workers at two others are now set to go on even longer strikes.
1199 SEIU, the largest health care union in the country, recently secured new deals at Gowanda Rehabilitation and Nursing, the Elderwood locations in Williamsville and Lockport, and four McGuire Group facilities, where hundreds of workers held one-day strikes in July.
The new three-year agreement at the McGuire homes includes a 10-step wage scale for all workers, including $16-an-hour- and $24.75-an-hour-starting rates for certified nursing assistants and licensed practical nurses, respectively.
It also includes $15-an-hour-starting rates for service workers like those in housekeeping and maintenance, retroactive bonuses, a 3% pension increase, and adding Juneteenth as a paid holiday.
Caitlin Seymour, a CNA at McGuire’s Northgate Health Care Facility in North Tonawanda, hopes the new contract will help with staffing shortages there. All four McGuire homes are rated four stars or more by the federal government, meaning above average, but are rated three stars or fewer, meaning below average, when it comes to staffing levels.
“The contract agreement that we got is going to help us get people through the door, and hopefully make them stay, instead of leaving,” she said.
McGuire officials declined to comment on the new contract.
The fight at McGuire had turned particularly ugly. 1199 filed five unfair labor practice charges against McGuire with the National Labor Relations Board, including allegations that the company contacted workers outside of work about bargaining proposals. McGuire has denied the allegations.
With the new contract in place, 1199 said it has withdrawn the charges.
Seymour said she’s relieved she and her coworkers didn’t have to go on a longer strike, both for their own sake and that of their residents.
“If we're out there on the line, fighting for better wages and for the contract, the people we take care of every single day might not get the level of care that they usually get,” she said. “And that's not fair to them.”
But 1199-represented workers at other homes may have to go on strike to get the contract they want.
Workers at Humboldt House Rehabilitation and Nursing in Buffalo and Fiddler’s Green Manor Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Springville authorized five-day strikes last month, and plan to utilize them sometime this month if a deal isn’t reached.
Neither facility’s management returned a request for comment.
“We can't seem to get anywhere, We’re at a standstill,” said Humboldt House activities aide Lorraine Beasley.
Beasley has worked at the 173-bed nursing home in Buffalo’s Hamlin Park Historic District for four years, but still only makes the state minimum wage of $13.20 an hour.
“It’s tough,” she said. “A lot of the girls have kids, a lot of the guys have kids, and they have young kids. And it's just really hard to try to keep them busy, maintain a household on minimum wage. It’s just not enough.”
And Beasley said service workers like her better pay after working through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We all did more than what we were supposed to, as far as our job titles,” she said. “Like for me myself, I would help the nurse with taking temperatures. If a bed needed to be changed, we changed beds. Like activities, we all pitched in together.”
Better wages might improve Humboldt House’s standing, too, Beasley said. The facility is rated just one star, the lowest possible. It was fined $50,000 by the state Department of Health in 2020 for failing to “establish and maintain an Infection Control Program” during the first wave of the pandemic.
Beasley said Humbdolt House ownership has since done renovations to update the facility’s look.
“All we need now is better employees, people who want to stay,” she said. “That's the problem. You get people and they're there for two months. And that's not good for residents to have to see someone different every few months in their room cleaning.”
The nursing home industry has long argued there are not enough available workers for them to hire, and even if there were, they often don’t have enough money to hire them. The New York State Health Facilities Association says there’s a $55 per day shortfall between what the state reimburses them for taking care of a Medicaid resident and the actual cost of caring for that resident.
But Beasley said the fact service workers at other local nursing homes got $15 an hour sends a powerful message to her facility.
“You can pay $15 an hour for service, or close to [it]. It is doable,” she said. “You can do it and still make a profit and still maintain the building. You're not going to go under with it. So it gives us hope. We'd like to see that.”
