Mediation will take place on Thursday, January 11 between Service Employees International Union workers and Ferguson nursing facility Christian Care Home – this time called for by the nursing home. Previous negotiating sessions were not productive.
Workers have been on strike since December 1, alleging unfair labor practices. About 90 workers are affected by the strike. They include nursing assistants, medication technicians and workers in maintenance, housekeeping, laundry and nutrition, according to Brenda Davis, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) shop steward at Christian Care Home, who works as a restorative aide.
Davis said their contract ended in August and a new administration came to Christian Care in September, at which time issues were exacerbated. The workers seek to resolve 13 grievances and have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
“The grievances covered unjust terminations and suspensions, denials for scheduled time off, and policy changes with regards to sick leave,” said Lenny Jones, state director of SEIU HealthCare.
He said the mediation on Thursday would deal with these outstanding grievances and hopefully include bargaining over contractual issues to resolve the strike.”
The NLRB ruling on the labor grievances is expected next month.
One grievance that came up at Christmas time concerns the sick-time buy-back program allegedly denied to striking workers.
“If you have a certain amount of hours built up for your sick time and you didn’t use it, they give you 40 hours of that the week or so before Christmas,” Davis said. “We have a lot of members out here that was eligible for the buyback program. We have a lot of people that depend on that 40 hours for their Christmas, and they refused to pay it.”
Day 40 of the strike was marked on the picket line on Tuesday, January 9 with a giant “pink slip” for the Women’s Christian Benevolent Association, the owners of Christian Care Home. It urges members of the ownership group to “place management of the care facility in the hands of persons or an entity with the resources and experience to run the nursing home in a manner that upholds the rights of workers, which also is in the best interests of residents.”
In a statement, the union calls for the Christian Woman’s Benevolent Association to “permanently replace itself in its role of managing the facility – language that echoes the unlawful and unprompted notices that nursing home administration issued to striking workers just days before Christmas, notifying them that they had been permanently replaced.”
The “pink slip” is being used to collect signatures from community leaders and will be presented to the Ferguson City Council on Tuesday night to ask for signatures from the mayor and council members. It will then be presented to the owners of Christian Care Home.
Donna Cooper, the administrator at Christian Care home, and Vi Wieble, board president of the Women’s Christian Benevolent Society, had not responded to a request for comment by press time.
Davis said the facility housed about 130 patients when the workers went on strike, but only about 70 remain.
A couple of weeks into the strike, the union reported that vehicles from St. Louis-based Midwest Geriatric Management HealthCare removed a number of Christian Care Home residents to other MGM facilities in the area. Jones said MGM does not have a consulting agreement with Christian Care Home, but one of their partners does.
MGM Healthcare is a subsidiary of MGM Management. MGM HealthCare owns eight locations in Missouri: Bent-Wood Nursing and Rehab Center, Hidden Lake Care Center, King City Healthcare, Oak Park Care Center, Springfield Skilled Care Center and The Lodges, Sunset Health Care Center, The Quarters at Des Peres and St. Sophia Health and Rehabilitation Center in Florissant.
St. Sophia in Florissant lost its Medicare funding for new patients recently following deaths of two residents. The most recent incident occurred in September, when a resident bled to death after pulling out a dialysis catheter. The second death occurred in 2016 when an 88-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s disease died after allegedly after being left in a whirlpool bath for eight hours. MGM also owns at six centers in Iowa, eight in Oklahoma.
