Union, pols support strikers

BOROUGH PRESIDENT Adolfo Carrión Jr. speaks outside the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation Center on Saturday, where workers have been striking for health benefits since Feb. 20.

By N. Clark Judd

Bronx elected officials and hundreds of men and women, some coming from as far away as Maryland, flooded local streets on Saturday to show solidarity with the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation Center healthcare workers on strike and to urge the home's owner to come to the table and negotiate.

The round-the-clock strike is now entering its fourth week outside the Cannon Place nursing home, and there seems to be no end in sight.

George Gresham, president of 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, said that three weeks of picketing with no results has made the strike an important cause to the entire union.

After going without a contract for several years, workers at the home have been without health benefits since November. Workers began striking on Feb. 20, but there's been little movement.

Mr. Gresham says strikes over benefits happen from time to time, but this strike, which he sees as a battle to keep benefits that were already agreed to in an old contract, is extremely rare - and nationally important.

"If one employer gets away with not paying into the workers' benefits … other employers are going to ask, 'If she can get away with it, why can't we?'" said Mr. Gresham, whose union represents more than 300,000 workers in the eastern United States.

On Saturday, Mr. Gresham, along a large handful of politicians and the throng of sign-waving union members, rallied in an effort to force Helen Sieger, the home's owner, to sign a contract.

There were speeches from Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr., Bronx County Democratic Party boss Jose Rivera, his son, Joel Rivera, a Bronx city councilman and the City Council Majority Leader, Councilwoman Naomi Rivera, state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, state Assemblyman Michael Benedetto and representatives from the Fort Independence Park Neighborhood Association.

Workers on strike felt buoyed by the support, and reiterated their reasons to spend snowy and rainy nights out on the street.

Sivasakthy Ramalinsan, who brought his three children with him to the rally, said he needs benefits to pay for the care he and his wife desperately need.

"I am a diabetic. My wife has epilepsy," he said. Their monthly budget includes $1,300 just for medicine.

Deborah Young, Mr. Ramalinsan's co-worker, said she will keep striking for Mr. Ramalinsan and other coworkers who are sick and need health care.

"The cold, the snow, late at night, early in the morning, we're fighting out here," Ms. Young said. "But we have to do it."

The union maintains that Ms. Sieger is obligated to make up for a multimillion- dollar difference between what she was expected to pay into several funds for workers' benefits and what she actually paid. Since May, the nursing home hasn't made any payments into the funds at all, the union said.

The home's former attorney, Joel Cohen, has said in the past that the nursing home will not pay the difference, but would be willing to make payments into the funds at a higher rate for the period beginning after a new contract is signed.

However, Mr. Cohen has since ceased representing the nursing home, and would not comment. The nursing home's new attorney, David Jasinski of Newark-based Jacinski & Williams, could not be reached by press time.

This is part of the March 20, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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