CONTRACTS Nursing home members at the Citadel at Kingsbridge home in the Bronx taking part in an informational picket on November 8th.
Nursing Home Members
Prevail Members celebrate victory in a tough fight with hundreds of owners at once.
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November/December 2021
It is said that: “The race is not given to the swift or to the strong, but to the one who endures to the end.” This has rarely been more apt than when 33,000 members from 249 nursing homes in the greater New York metropolitan area reached a contract agreement with their employers on the brink of the first large scale 1199SEIU strike in more than three decades. The road to victory was long and hard, but members who
worked together through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic were never going to settle for anything less. Cassandra Anderson, a CNA at Regency Extended Care in Yonkers and a veteran on the negotiating committee, felt this sense of urgency: “This time was different because of the pandemic and how we were treated. We lost residents, co-workers, and family members because of COVID. It was personal so I was negotiating not just for us, but for all of those we lost ... to show it wasn’t all in vain.” She talks about a lack of attention from management in her facility during the peak of the pandemic. “It felt like all along, they didn’t care about us. I would walk past another assisted living facility and see a ‘Heroes Work Here’ sign out front, but the owners of Regency didn’t do anything. I had to gather money myself to hold a small memorial paying respects for those staff and residents who died.” At the end of September, tens of thousands of 1199 members won an
