Mt. Pleasant nursing home workers picket for wage hikes, better contract

Workers at a Mt. Pleasant nursing home formed an informational picket line outside the facility Thursday afternoon as part of an effort to get a better contract with higher wages without higher health care insurance premiums.

Holding up signs saying “We Deserve a Fair Contract,” about 15 to 20 members of the Service Employee International Union Local HCPA members stood along South Church Street in front of the Harmon House Care Center where they work to make people aware of their demands for a better contract.

The 70 members, who are certified nursing assistants, housekeepers and dietary employees, have been working under the terms of a three-year contract that expired Aug. 22, according to Sun Strait, an SEIU representative.

Grane Health Care Co. of O’Hara, which owns Harmon House Care Center and the Harmar Village Care Center in Harmar, is offering the Harmon House’s certified nurse’s assistants and personal care assistants raises of 35 cents an hour in the first year, followed by 30 cents an hour in the final two years of the pact, according to Sun Strait, a SEIU representative. Non-nursing employees also are being offered a 35-cent-an hour raise the first year, followed by two annual raises of 25 cents an hour, Strait said.

The company claimed it pays competitive wages to its employees and has offered its SEIU-represented members “a competitive wage increase in each year of a proposed three-year contract,” Mark L. Fox, president of Grane Health Care, said in a statement Thursday.

The certified nurse’s assistants have a starting wage between $12.45 an hour and $13.70 an hour, depending on experience, said Sun Strait, an SEIU representative. The personal care attendants have starting hourly wages between $11.90 and $13.70 depending on experience and the dietary, laundry and housekeeping employees have starting hourly wages ranging from $11.10 to $11.60

“You don’t get rich doing these jobs,” said Cindy Burk, an SEIU organizer.

Fox said that Grane Health Care offered pay raises even though the federal government’s Medicaid program, which is the source of most of the facility’s funding, has not increased its reimbursement for more than five years.

Grane Health Care offered workers covered by the company’s health care insurance an additional five cents an hour, but intended to charge them $40 more per month for their health insurance premiums, Strait said.

A negotiating committee member, Patty Jubic, a certified nurse’s aide from Ruffsdale, said they are not willing to relinquish their “really good contract” that contains language to protect the workers’ rights.

“When I went to negotiations this time … I realized they were gutting our contract,” Jubic said. “They were trying to take out all the words in our contract, things that I would use and not want to give up. I told them you’re not gutting what they called ‘our little purple book.’”

The company and union last met Sept. 1 and are not scheduled to return to the bargaining table until Oct. 8, Bark said.

Harmon House also recently distributed a significant portion of its federal CARES Act money — it did not reveal how much — to employees in the form of a bonus to recognize their extraordinary efforts, “even though the facility could have exclusively used that money to offset its significant financial losses and increased costs associated with the pandemic,” Fox said.

“We just want a decent contract,” said Linda McFadden of Connellsville, a housekeeper.