WHEN:
Tuesday, August 6th, 2024
Time: 9 AM to 11 AM
WHERE:
Paramount Plaza, Rockport Healthcare Services Headquarters, 3580 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90010
WHO:
Nursing home workers—members of SEIU Local 2015, the nation’s largest long-term care union and California’s largest labor union representing more than 470,000 nursing home workers and home care providers); Supporters and allies of the SEIU Local 2015 community.
WHAT:
Nursing home workers will hold a press conference to call on the Rockport Brius-owned facilities to demand that quality incentive payments—taxpayer funds—are used to attract and retain staff amid skyrocketing turnover and unsafe staffing. This press conference comes ahead of a two-day picket on August 7-8 across Vernon Healthcare Center and Centinela Skilled Nursing and Wellness Center (East and West).
California’s Workforce & Quality Incentive Program (WQIP) offers state funding incentives to facilities that meet staffing standards and improve the quality of care for residents. These new incentives encourage nursing home operators to maintain safe staffing in their facilities. Safe staffing improves the quality of care for residents, healthcare outcomes, and working conditions for workers, which in turn helps to lower employee turnover.
Rockport/Brius is not using the WQIP quality incentive as intended. SEIU Local 2015’s proposal to management was simple: when the state gives nursing home workers money, the employer needs to use those taxpayer funds the way they were intended—to improve nursing home quality in our communities. Instead, Rockport/Brius management has come up with weak proposals to pay its staff minimal amounts and wants to exclude entire years of the program.
WHY:
Nursing home workers must receive guaranteed percentage shares every year of the WQIP funds.
Turnover is skyrocketing at Rockport/Brius facilities and workers report unsafe staffing levels and a high number of residents with serious mental illness that workers are not properly trained to care for.
Over the years, California’s health department has issued various citations to Brius facilities. And according to allegations made in one lawsuit, Brius keeps its facilities understaffed on purpose to maximize their profits. In other words, the vicious cycle of low staffing levels leading to burnout and high turnover leading to even lower staffing levels is manufactured
The picket will take place against the backdrop of a nursing home industry battered by the dual challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and workforce shortages, which existed long before the pandemic and has remained a challenge of the industry. This has resulted in alarming turnover rates among underpaid and underprotected care workers.
It’s time to step up and demand these frontline workers get their share of the funding they NEED!
Press Contacts:
DKC News
SEIU@dkcnews.com
On Site Contacts:
erickao@seiu2015.org