Rockport/Brius workers are asking for safe staffing levels so they can give adequate care.
Southern California—Nursing home workers at Vernon Healthcare Center (Los Angeles), Norwalk Skilled Nursing and Healthcare Center (Norwalk), Montrose Springs Skilled Nursing and Healthcare Center (Montrose), and Gardenview Skilled Nursing and Healthcare Centre (Claremont) submitted a 10-day advance notice of intent to launch a 3-day strike starting on October 18th–20th.
Workers and facility management are still in contract negotiations. We’re hopeful that the employer will make the right decision and bring urgently needed improvements.
At the four Nursing Homes, all of which suffer from dangerously low staffing levels and COVID outbreaks, workers report:
- Not enough nurse assistants, making it impossible to provide safe, adequate care.
- Facilities not equipped to take on psych patients, resulting in inadequate care and resulting workplace violence.
- High incidence of health & safety violations.
- Not enough housekeepers, leading to poor sanitation.
- Patient to staff ratios that leave workers feeling burnt out.
- High staff turnover.
- Not enough kitchen staff.
- Not enough PPE.
- Inadequate Covid safety protocols.
California’s health department has issued various citations to Rockport/Brius facilities. And according to allegations made in one lawsuit, Brius keeps its facilities understaffed on purpose to maximize their profits. This strike takes place after major impacts to the nursing home industry battered by the dual challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and workforce shortages. We know that hundreds of thousands of nursing home workers have left and are leaving the industry nationwide since the start of the pandemic.
This 3-day strike sends a clear message that there’s an urgent need for improved care and working conditions. Workers call for increased wages and benefits necessary to attract enough workers.
“There are too few of us working. That means that despite our many hours of hard work that we put in each day, our nursing homes are in crisis, and we have to deal with that crisis every day. It’s impossible to give residents the care they need when we each have to take care of dozens of people on a shift. Sometimes dozens more than we can safely care for, trying to do work that should be split between 4 to 5 workers,” said Maria Alejandra, a CNA at the City of Claremont’s Gardenview Healthcare and Wellness Centre. “I love what I do, and I love my residents. It’s not an issue of how hard we work. It’s an issue of the conditions that Brius makes us work under. That’s why this upcoming strike is so important to me: it’s about getting us the help that we need so that we can take care of our residents with the full care and attention that they deserve.”
“The demand for care jobs in the U.S., including nursing homes, continues to grow at an exponential rate. This employer must recognize the urgent need to invest in these facilities and attract the urgently needed workers,” said SEIU 2015 President Arnulfo De La Cruz. “This is also a justice issue…it’s not lost on us that a majority of nursing home workers are Black women, Indigenous women, women of color, and immigrants, and too many of these essential workers struggle with low wages and inadequate benefits.”
To learn more about SEIU Local 2015 visit www.SEIU2015.org or on social media @SEIU2015.