Workers at 11 different primary care locations who work for Optum Health Care in the Hudson Valley, NY (formerly known as Crystal Run Healthcare) voted overwhelmingly to join 1199 on February 25. This latest group of workers are joining the nearly 650 workers who are already represented by 1199, bringing the total number of union members to 1,700 Optum Healthcare has acquired almost all of the primary care practices in the Mid-Hudson Valley and has significantly altered working conditions and patient care practices as part of its drive for profits. Their latest takeovers mean that Optum is now the largest employer of doctors in the United States and is owned by United Healthcare.

“In a union contract,” said Marica LoFranco, a Patient Service Representative, at the Middletown location said, “we can establish clear job descriptions and duties to protect against management changing our workloads constantly without adjusting our pay. Compensation should match amount of responsibility and be clearly defined.”

Michele Baez, an Optum Sleep Tech at Rock Hill, who also voted to join 1199, said she voted ‘Yes’ for better health benefits, better salary, and better management.

“I have been with Crystal Run Healthcare since 2002 and we hoped that merging with Optum would be better,” she said. “But everything just got worse. With a seat at the table, we can turn our workplace around.”

Optum ran an intense antiunion campaign in an attempt to intimidate the Crystal Run caregivers from exercising the legally-protected right to organize a union. Now the healthcare behemoth is challenging the results of the democratic election administered by the federal government on unsustainable legal grounds. Optum has filed objections with the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] in an attempt to overturn the results of the election Optum claims that they were denied the right to make every employee attend a mandatory anti-union presentation. Under the former administration’s NLRB, employers were prohibited from forcing employees to listen to an employer’s one-sided anti-union speech.