SAUGUS — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton said the state should yank the Saugus Rehabilitation and Nursing Center’s license and offered his support to facility workers who launched a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, contending their employer pays some of the lowest wages in nursing homes statewide.
“Look, you have a nursing home here, that is actually breaking the law,” said Moulton.
According to his press advisory, the nursing home is not in compliance with the state’s Direct Care Cost Quotient, which requires all nursing homes to spend no less than 75 percent of total facility revenue on direct care.
Tim Foley, executive vice president of 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said that, as of June 2021, the facility spent 66 percent of its revenues on direct care. This put its wages in the bottom 7 percent in the state, according to a union spokesperson.
The union said since last September almost half of the facility’s 60 workers have left. Foley mentioned that it also damages the ties that existed in the community between the caregivers and the patients and their families that used to know each other for decades.
“It’s 24 patients for two certified nursing assistants (CNAs) for one shift, and in the night it’s one,” said Eddy Pierre, one of the leaders of the strike.
“The state should yank the license of this operator,” said Moulton, a Salem Democrat. “I don’t want to see this nursing-home operator in this state anymore.”
Addressing the workers, the congressman said that they should be paid like heroes, and yet were not even paid enough to survive.
The union campaign to raise the wages for the Saugus Rehabilitation and Nursing Center employees began in September last year, the union said.
The union said the main point of controversy now is that the standard four-year contract previews an annual wage reopener, and that means that the contract opens every year to renegotiate the wage. During the first year of their current contract the workers did not have the wage reopener, because the Center was changing its ownership.
The company agreed to 5 percent of a wage increase as a second-year wage reopener of July 2021.
According to the union, the company is insisting not to have another wage reopener, and it means the workers received only one wage increase.
“We have modified our previous proposal to accept the rates you offered,” the union said in a letter to the management. “We are not going to accept a four-year contract with one wage increase.”
Even the increased wages are not competitive, the union said. The union said CNAs with more than 10 years of working experience will now receive $19 per hour, while “in Medford it’s $22.75 per hour.”
“They’ve proven they can’t meet our standard of care. They can’t meet the needs of our community. They can’t serve our locals,” said Moulton.
The workers and the legislators hope the strike pushes the company to cooperate.
“The nursing home is just not cooperating,” said state Rep. Peter Capano (D-Lynn).
According to Capano, the government can help the employees by supporting them on a picket line, continuing to advocate for good wages, and organizing the workers in the workplace.
Caregivers postponed a previously scheduled strike for March 30 following an agreement to resume bargaining, according to the relevant press advisory. However, later the management became unwilling to discuss a scheduled wage reopener, confining workers to one raise over a four-year period.
In January 2021, the nursing home was sold to Limited Liability Companies, whose lead agent is Azriel “Velvy” Lieberman, an equity partner based in New York, said Moulton’s press advisory. According to it, Lieberman purchased two Massachusetts assisted-living facilities during the same period.
Saugus Rehabilitation and Nursing Center management was not immediately available for comment. The facility is an 80-bed nursing home that employs about 40 of 1199 SEIU workers, the majority of whom are of Haitian and African descent, said an 1199 SEIU press release.
1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East that is representing over 70,000 healthcare workers throughout Massachusetts and over 450,000 workers across the East Coast, is the largest and fastest-growing healthcare union in America, according to the official information from the organization.
