A three-month strike for health care benefits at a nursing home in New York’s west Bronx has drawn the attention of a couple of national heavy hitters: Presidential candidate Barack Obama and the New York Times.
According to a May 26 article in the Times, Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation and Care Center stopped paying health insurance premiums for its workers last August, so their coverage ended. On February 20, 220 workers went on strike, calling on the home to reinstate coverage and its contract with 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
The nursing home’s owner, Helen Sieger, claims that the strike is illegal and that its cause is not the lack of health coverage but a disagreement between her and the union over who should be the arbitrator in contract disputes.
To keep the strikers motivated through the long ordeal, the union arranged a conference with Obama. “You’re not just representing yourselves, you’re representing a lot of people out there who are struggling,” he told them.
The union blames the stress of the strike and the lack of insurance for the death of CNA Audrey Smith-Campbell, who had worked at Kingsbridge Heights for 29 years. After her benefits were cut off, Smith-Campbell stopped buying her asthma medication, which cost $600 a month. She had a severe asthma attack on May 12 and went into cardiac arrest the next day.
“Health care workers like us should have health care coverage,” Jacqueline Simono, a therapeutic recreation worker at Kingsbridge, told the Times.
Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org
i think it is a shame for her to have stopped coverage on her employees. What if she were told she no longer had benefits, i imagine she would have gone the same route as her employees if she didn’t have the funds or the means to just jump to a new job, like it is that easy. i think all the people should get all the money put into the system back and then some.