PROVIDENCE – More than 40 nursing home workers lined both sides of Dodge Street in front of Bannister Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Providence on Friday morning, waiving yellow and blue flags and demanding for better workplace conditions.
The union that represents them, Service Employees International Union District Healthcare 1199 New England, is asking for safer staffing standards, more-affordable health care, better training and wage increases.
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Tenah Nimmo-Powell is a certified nursing assistant that worked the overnight shift before joining the crowd at 6 a.m. on Friday.
“We’re the lowest-paid nursing home in the state,” said Nimma-Powell, who said Bannister was an “inhumane workplace.”
She contracted COVID-19 earlier this year, which was traced back to Bannister, and ended up passing it to her husband.
It’s been nearly two months since nursing home workers at five facilities, including Bannister, promised that they would postpone any type of strike because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and a plea from Gov. Gina M. Raimondo.
Caregivers will be outside the center to strike for three days after Bannister, which is owned by Centers Health Care in New York, “refused” to accept workers’ proposals to improve staffing and wages, according to union spokeswoman Amelia Abromaitis.
Rep. Scott Slater, D-Providence, who co-sponsored a bill that would help wages and staffing levels, was also outside with the workers on Friday, waiving an SEIU flag.
“This is important. We call them heroes all the time. But we need to prove it and pay them a living wage,” said Slater. “I’m here in solidarity.”
Raimondo, who penned a letter to SEIU President Patrick Quinn this past summer asking for the workers to hold off on a strike, had supported Slater’s legislation. However, back in late July, she did not think it was an appropriate time for health care workers to go on strike, given the current health crisis.
“The Governor is disappointed that the nursing home administrators of the Bannister Center for Rehabilitation & Nursing and the union were unable to reach an agreement. She is incredibly grateful for the hard work of nursing home staff during this pandemic and understands their frustrations,” wrote the governor’s spokeswoman Audrey Lucas in an emailed statement on Friday afternoon.
Lucas said the governor remains supportive of legislation to better support staff and residents in the state’s nursing homes.
Scott Fraser, the president of the Rhode Island Health Care Association, said the walkout was a “harmful and heartless” act, and said that it put residents at risk.
“Many of our residents have the same workers caring for them day in and day out,” said Fraser. “Today – and possibly for days longer – those workers will be missing from their bedside; quite a discomforting experience.”
Fraser said he hopes to have workers come back to their workplaces and negotiate again.
“These workers are less concerned about pay as they are about safe staffing levels and providing care to these patients,” said Slater, who said there hasn’t been enough COVID-19 tests provided to these workers. “We test Providence College students more than direct care staff.”
Care Health Centers spokesman Jeffrey Jacomowitz, which is the company that owns Bannister, said that like many other long-term care facilities in the state, Bannister has been under regulatory and financial stress throughout the pandemic.
“As a result, we are at a point in time where it is not feasible to add a new large financial commitment,” said Jacomowitz in a statement on Friday. “Bannister Center understands and empathizes with our employees and therefore offered the employees a short-term contract with an immediate bump in pay, a reduction in health care premiums and a COVID-19 hazard pay bonus.”
Jacomowitz said the goal of the offer was to provide employees with something now and then reopen negotiations in another year, when “we are hopefully through this pandemic.”
The union rejected the offer.
Jacomowitz also said that Care Health Centers arranged to cover the facility with temporary nurses and other health care workers so that the residents were still able to receive care as the strike continues throughout the weekend and into Monday.
According to Adanjesus Marin, the lead organizer for the Lifelong Care team that put on the strike, there’s no reason that Bannister shouldn’t be paying these workers more.
“These people only make 50 cents more than minimum wage,” said Marin. “Don’t put out a sign that says we’re heroes and then not treat us as such.”
PBN could not confirm the average pay of Bannister employees.
Rose Francois, another certified nursing assistant at Bannister, said she felt as though she didn’t have a choice but strike today, and for the rest of the weekend. She said because of the staff shortage, many of the workers don’t have time to conduct the necessary steps to prevent COVID-19 before they are “running to care for the next patient.”
“I put my life at risk every day for almost nothing,” said Francois. “We deserve better. [The residents] deserve better.”
(Adds 12th through 16th paragraphs with comments from Gov. Gina M. Raimondo spokesperson Audrey Lucas and Rhode Island Health Care Association President Scott Fraser.)
Alexa Gagosz is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Gagosz@PBN.com. You may also follow her on Twitter at @AlexaGagosz.
