Caregivers on Strike Look to Labor Board for Relief

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/nyregion/26nursing.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: May 26, 2008

After three wearying months of walking the picket line, 220 nursing home workers at the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation and Care Center in the west Bronx have had plenty of time to sharpen their message.


Librado Romero/The New York Times

Workers say the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation and Care Center in the Bronx stopped paying for their health insurance.


“Health care workers like us should have health care coverage,” said Jacqueline Simono, who has worked for 10 years at the six-story, 400-bed nursing home.

In August, the nursing home stopped paying the workers’ health insurance premiums, and as a result, their coverage was cut off. That, the workers say, was the main reason they went on strike on Feb. 20.

The workers, members of 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, say they are expecting the National Labor Relations Board to give them some good news soon to help end the strike.

A labor board official said on Friday that the board’s Manhattan office would issue a formal complaint on Tuesday or Wednesday accusing Kingsbridge Heights of illegally spying on the workers, refusing to execute a contract with the union and failing to pay $2 million into the health and benefits fund.

Dan Ratner, a lawyer for the union, said the labor board’s insistence that the nursing home and 1199 have a contract will pressure the home’s owner to end the dispute so that the strikers can resume work. Union officials say that 1199 accepted the nursing home’s last contract offer and that a contract should therefore be in force — despite what they said was an effort by the nursing home’s owner, Helen Sieger, to walk away from a deal.

FULL story at link.