Bannister Nursing Home Workers Calling for Strike, Facility Has Nearly 100 Infections and 20 Deaths
GoLocalProv Business Team
Bannister Nursing Home Workers Calling for Strike, Facility Has Nearly 100 Infections and 20 Deaths
The facility has had nearly 20 deaths and 100 positive cases of the coronavirus according to RI Department of Health data.
The union says the corporation that owns Bannister, NY-based Centers Health Care, has refused to accept workers’ proposals to “improve staffing and end poverty wages.”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe strike begins just days after caregivers at both Charlesgate Center and Greenville Center "achieved groundbreaking contract settlements that guarantee residents well over 4.1 hours of daily hands-on care at Greenville and more than double the current hours of care per resident at Charlesgate, while including protection against mandatory overtime, significant wage increases, affordable healthcare and language ensuring increased nursing home funding at the state level goes directly to worker wages," said SEIU.
The union claims that after submitting contract proposals over one year ago that would create safe staffing standards of 4.1 direct-care hours, wage boosts, affordable healthcare and training opportunities, Bannister Center has not accepted these proposals at the bargaining table despite caregivers risking personal safety for months throughout the COVID-19 crisis.
Nursing home workers wh are overwhelmingly Black and brown women are paid a starting rate of only $12 an hour.
The union claims that the company despite healthy profits and large windfalls of federal funding, Bannister’s parent company "decided to disregard the urgent needs of health care heroes who have shown up every day in a deadly pandemic to provide high-quality compassionate care."