Hospital Workers Hold Candlelight Demonstration for Affordable Health Care and Fair Pay

November 30, 2015

Caregivers at Sinai Hospital held a candlelight demonstration on February 11, 2015, to call for a fair contract and to protest the hospital’s latest proposals to raise out-of-pocket costs for medical expenses. Joined by community activists and allies, dozens of workers gathered near the hospital on Greenspring Avenue, holding tea light candles and chanting “We need affordable healthcare!”The hot button issue in these negotiations is healthcare benefits: the hospital’s latest proposal would increase the cost of premiums for workers by 3.3 percent, making it more costly for workers to manage their health needs. A union proposal to institute a “health and wellness navigator,” to help workers better access health benefits, was rejected by the hospital. Sinai management also nixed a union proposal that would make office visits to physicians within the parent LifeBridge Health system free to Sinai workers.Without such provisions in the contract, said union organizer Lisa Epps, it becomes “harder for workers to take care of themselves and their families.”When patient care assistant Annie Mason-White was hit by a truck last year, she exhausted her savings after numerous visits to specialists. She eventually had to resort to borrowing money from a co-worker to see her primary care physician—a critical appointment, since Mason-White also lives with diabetes.“I’ve worked hard for this hospital for 43 years, and I really care about our patients,” says Mason-White. “At my age and as long as I’ve been here, I don’t understand why I’m still struggling to pay for healthcare.”Approximately 570 service, maintenance and technical workers at Sinai Hospital are members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and have been in negotiations with hospital management for a new contract since September 2014. Set to expire on February 19, 2015, the current contract has been extended several times since negotiations began. Both Sinai Hospital and LifeBridge Health have been very profitable for the past four years. Their profit margins show continued growth; while Sinai is offering workers 2 percent raises in this contract, members of their management team have seen increases in wages and bonuses of up to 36 percent over three years.However, workers at Sinai have not reaped the same benefits from the hospital’s financial success. A number of Sinai workers earn far below the poverty level for a family of four, which is $11.47 an hour; some of the lowest-paid workers earn less than $10.80 an hour.“Sinai’s health benefits are a hardship for a lot of us,” says Scott Wright, a floor tech who had to resort to food stamps to feed his family when several hospitalizations and treatments to manage an intestinal disease wiped out his savings. “I’m already living paycheck to paycheck. I was looking forward to a real raise, but it’s going to be mostly wiped out if I have to pay even more out of my pocket.”- See more at: http://www.1199seiu.org/hospital_workers_hold_candlelight_demonstration_for_affordable_health_care_and_fair_pay#sthash.bG0turTU.dpuf