NEW YORK – An arbitrator has issued an historic $30 million arbitration award covering more than 100,000 current and former 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East bargaining unit members employed at 42 home care agencies.
“I’ve always been interested in science and helping people,” says Yvette Vasquez, “so naturally where the two combined is the medical
field,” she says. But finding her current position as an Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA), came with detours. “I’m a germaphobe, and I
don’t like needles, so I couldn’t be a nurse. Then I did a year of social work in college, but I realized I’m way too emotional for that—I couldn’t adopt everyone.” Vasquez landed on becoming an OTA because “I had an occupational therapist after a surgery I had as a child.” She wanted to be able to give back the same level of quality care she received at the time.
When Kora Yaineneh, an 1199SEIU RN first arrived in the U.S. from her native Gambia in 1990, she spent a few weeks at 333 East 181st Street, in the home of Abdoulie Touray. In keeping with Gambian tradition, Yaineneh did not join her husband who had already found a job and a home in New York, until she had spent time in Touray’s house becoming oriented.
When 1199 learned of the terrible blaze that claimed the lives of 17 people when it ripped through a Bronx apartment building, the Union feared the worst.
“President Biden should be commended for elevating the need for improved nursing home care and better protections for seniors and their caregivers in his State of the Union address. Thousands of our 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East members who serve in nursing facilities across Florida have been calling for similar reforms for years.
Home care workers have always been essential— they provide the necessary care that allows seniors and
people with disabilities to live independently—and with dignity in their own homes. During the pandemic, 1199SEIU
home care members have been stretched to their limits more than ever before.
Members at ten New Jersey nursing homes just won a contract settlement with Complete Care Management, a significant victory in what
had been a major campaign throughout 2021 against the state’s largest nursing home operator.
The professional unit at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, NY, voted to join 1199SEIU in a near unanimous poll on January 18, bringing 60 new members into the Union family. The new titles included Medical Technologists, Pharmacists, Case Managers and Social Workers.
On January 17, hundreds of 1199SEIU members at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY, held their 41st annual event to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Because of the surge in Omicron cases, the show took place over Zoom.
Claudette Colvin, a now retired 1199SEIU member, who courageously defied the segregated bus laws in Alabama during the Jim Crow era, has finally been cleared of wrongdoing some 65 years later.