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Date: 10/17/2023
NORTHAMPTON — Hospital workers and members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East picketed outside of Cooley Dickinson Hospital on Oct. 6 with hopes of securing better wages and more favorable working conditions.
According to Nicole Foote-Stephenson, the union’s administrative organizer, the union has been working without a contract in all of 2023 after their contract expired in January. Since then, the union has been in contract negotiations with Cooley Dickinson, a member of Mass. General Brigham (MGB), for over 10 months.
“It’s been really slow and there’s been a lot of fight with MGB,” said Foote-Stephenson, regarding the negotiation process. “They’re really not trying to increase the well-being of their healthcare workers.”
Foote-Stephenson joined around 50 CDH employees and union members picketing in front of Cooley Dickinson in response to low wages, poor working conditions and understaffing.
Marta Anex-Schnauss, a behavioral health technician at CDH, wrote in a Facebook post before the event that MGB is offering “cents on the dollar” in negotiating for wages of essential staff, including environmental services, emergency department technicians, personal care assistants, phlebotomists and kitchen staff.
According to Anex-Schnauss, only four out of 30 environmental service staff positions are filled at the hospital, which means the rest of the cleaning falls to technicians, personal care assistants and nursing staff.
Foote-Stephenson said there are times when there is only one personal care assistant available to take care of 32 patients, which means patients are not receiving the care they should be.
“A lot of the staff, they go home and they’re so upset because they couldn’t give their best to their patients,” Foote-Stephenson said. “Patient care has definitely suffered a lot. That’s why we’re out here. We’re trying to spread the word and hopefully hope just that MGB will hear us and do better and actually bargain in good faith with us.”
Robert Serrano, an emergency department technician for the hospital, said a lot of the understaffing is due to low wages. He said the lowest-paid employees, including kitchen staff and transportation, make $15.15 an hour, which is about $6 less than what is considered a livable wage in Massachusetts without any children and $30 less than what is considered a livable wage in the state with one child, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Living Wage Calculator.
Serrano, who is currently a part of the negotiating team looking for these improvements, said that the department is currently hoping to raise its current technician starting salary of $17 to $18, which is the median hourly rate for emergency room technicians at Boston hospitals. But Serrano said MGB’s lawyer declined to raise it to Boston rates at the last negotiating meeting, as of press time.
“We’re the ones doing CPR, dealing with people coming in from motor vehicle accidents, critical stuff and we don’t have the staff,” Serrano said. “So, wait times in the emergency department have increased, the number of falls has increased. I mean unfortunately without staff it’s kind of harder to keep people alive.”
Outside of higher wages and better conditions, Foote-Stephenson said workers are also asking for more effective ways to retain staff and better holiday packages. Serrano said he used to have the same holidays as nurses, but now he has five to their 11.
Foote-Stephenson believes that, because of the low wages, there is a lack of opportunity to convince up-and-coming healthcare students to work there.
“It’s sad that MGB doesn’t see the opportunity they have because they have these colleges here,” Foote-Stephenson said. “A lot of healthcare students are there. This would be a great place for them to come work, but nobody’s going to come work here.”
Wendy Morin, a union delegate and the only unit secretary left in the hospital, said that negotiations with MGB have been “frustrating.”
“We’re getting nowhere with MGB,” Morin said. “They’re telling us they’re at the end of their rope, but they’re offering us 10 cents [more an hour] and we know we’re worth more than 10 cents an hour.”
Morin said the goal is to raise those $15-an-hour employees up to $19-an-hour. She said MGB and the union have agreed on 8 to 13% wage increases for the first year of a proposed three-year contract. After that though, MGB is offering a 1% increase for the next two years, according to Morin. The union, instead, wants 4% increases for those two years.
She said that the hospital is currently down 20 personal care assistants and 24 to 28 nurses.
“You’ve got Walmart, you’ve got some other fast-food places paying $19 an hour, Stop and Shop $17 an hour,” Morin said told Reminder Publishing. “It’s like everyone else is paying more. We had probably a dozen PCAs leave in the last year to go and work at jobs that are not healthcare.”
In a statement to Reminder Publishing, Cooley Dickinson spokesperson Adam Bagni said, “We look forward to continuing our good faith efforts to reach a fair, equitable solution on behalf of our valued healthcare workers and the Cooley Dickinson community. Our goal has been, and remains, to reach a fair agreement that supports and recognizes the critical work of our staff in providing high-quality care to our patients. We continue to work towards that goal.”
According to Morin, another date has been set to delegate, but she said she expects more of these pickets to occur.