At the University of Rochester this past weekend, the atmosphere was festive, as the UR inaugurated its new president, Joel
Seligman. But some University employees didn’t have their minds on celebration;
contract negotiations between management and two unions, SEIU Local 1199 and
200 United, have stalled, and several hundred union members were picketing.
The unions represent
about 1,200 of the university’s lowest-paid full-time workers, primarily
patient-care technicians, surgical assistants, secretaries, drivers, janitors,
and food servers. The university has offered current employees an annual wage
increase of 2 percent for the next two years, but it wants to hold down wages
for new employees by spreading scheduled increases over a longer period. It
also wants to limit its contribution to employee health-insurance costs.
In a recent interview
with City, Seligman suggested that growth at the UR‘sMedicalCenter could boost the local economy. That growth could attract highly paid
professional workers, but the UR‘s current labor conflict highlights the needs
of another sector of the Rochester population: low-wage workers and the unemployed. Will the UR‘s growth benefit them as well?
On average, the
workers make about $24,000 a year. “Keep in mind, we’re talking about the
working poor,” says SEIU Local Vice President Bruce Popper, “people who are
living paycheck to paycheck, most of them from the
19th Ward,” right across the river from the University.
MedicalCenter spokesperson Teri D’Agostino
says the Center’s wages are comparable for similar positions regionally and
nationally. In addition, says D’Agostino, the university
offers scholarships to employees to study nursing, and, along with the union,
contributes to a fund for training that can lead to a degree.
Among the workers on
the picket line last week was Devery Reid-Holmes.
Immediately likeable, Reid-Holmes is the kind of person you’d want to see
coming into your hospital room. She’s one of a group of union workers whom
patients see more often than many other hospital staff, because she deals with
so many of their needs. In fact, patients often mistake her for a nurse rather
than a much-lower-paid patient-care technician.
Reid-Holmes, who also
provides for her 3-year-old daughter Imani, stepped
out of the picket line on Friday to talk about her work and why she was there.
We come in, and one of the first things we do is get the
patient’s vitals done: make sure everything is okay with them. See how they are
doing. How they slept that night. Then we get them fed, cleaned, and bathed.
Sometimes we dress them. They may need traction set up. We do everything for
them except we don’t administer drugs, hook up the IV’s — and we can’t do
[surgical] pin care. I’m in orthopedics, so many of the patients have just had
surgery, and we can’t do the pins.
I started out working in the kitchen. I’ve been here at the
hospital for two years and eight months, and I’ve been in this position for a
year. If you had asked me a few years ago if I would ever do something like
this, I would have said no. I never even thought about it. I wanted to be an
elementary teacher, because I love working with kids. But I really love doing
this.
I like being around people and helping them. A big part of
my job is making them feel comfortable in spite of the situation. Nobody wakes
up and says, “I want to be in the hospital today.” Some of them are in pain,
and they can be a little worried and anxious.
We don’t usually deal with people who are very sick in the
sense that they have a terminal illness. They are here because they are usually
having hip, knee, back, or neck surgery. We do a lot of back surgeries. And they are pretty uncomfortable at first.
So it makes me feel good when they call out and say, “Send Devery
in here.”
When they ask for you by name it’s nice, because it means
that you have established a bit of trust with them, and they are getting used
to being here. They feel free to talk with you and tell you what they need.
They’re getting better. Sometimes they will come back a couple of months later
and say hello, and it’s nice, especially when you can hardly tell they were
even here in the first place. They are up and moving around like normal.
There’s really nothing I don’t like about the job. I know
when I tell people what I do, the first thing they think is: You clean people’s
butts for a living. But you really don’t do that much of that. It’s not about
that. I mean, sometimes people need a lot of help. They can’t feed themselves.
They can’t sit up right. And yeah, sometimes they need help cleaning
themselves. But it’s not a big deal. I don’t think it’s bad. It means a lot to
them. I mean when you can’t even do that yourself, you’re pretty grateful. So I don’t mind it.
I’m out here because the benefits are really important to
me. I have my daughter to think about, and if they do what they say they’re gonna do, I’ve looked at those numbers, and I would be
working just to pay for health insurance. Nothin’ else. And I can’t do that.
This is the first time that I have ever done anything like
this. Before this job I worked in a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and this is a whole
lot better than that. But at the same time, I don’t feel guilty. I’m not
afraid. I don’t feel like I am doing something wrong by being out here.
I hope they [management] understand that. I feel we
contribute in a very important way. We are on the front lines with the
patients. We do a lot of things that need to be done in a place like this. You
don’t think the doctors are going to pass trays or the nurses are going to
sweep the floors, do you? It would never happen.
And the union helps, because a lot of decisions are made by
people who often don’t look at you as if you have certain needs from the job,
too. And that you should be treated with respect because what you are doing is
important, too. A lot of decisions are made behind closed doors without any
input from you. So it helps to have someone support you. There are people that
have been here for 30 and 40 years. And most of us have families or kids to
take care of, so we can’t afford to lose benefits or pay more for them.
I just think that management gets so much more out of
workers who love their jobs and can’t wait to come to work in the morning. It’s
important to make a profit, but so is investing in your employees. They’re good
people, and I hope it works out.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2005.
