A six-month strike by 220 workers at a nursing home in the Bronx is likely to end next week following a federal judge’s ruling on Thursday that the employer had committed “serious and pervasive” labor law violations.þþThe judge, Denise L. Cote of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ordered the nursing home, the Kingsbridge Heights Rehabilitation and Care Center, to resume paying health insurance premiums for employees. The home’s failure to pay those premiums caused the union to strike on Feb. 20.þþJudge Cote concluded that the nursing home had violated the law not just by stopping the payments, but also by spying on workers, threatening to fire them if they went on strike and giving them bonuses as an incentive to quit their union, 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East.þþAfter the walkout began, officials at the nursing home told the 220 strikers that it planned to take away their jobs by replacing them permanently, according to union officials. Judge Cote’s ruling in effect saved the strikers’ jobs by ordering Kingsbridge Heights to reinstate them if the union made an unconditional offer to return to work.þþWith the nursing home under order to resume payments to its health and benefit fund, the union said just hours after the ruling that it would offer to return to work without conditions.þþ“I am happy that they have to take us back,” said Helen Duncan, who has worked for two decades as a licensed practical nurse at the 400-bed home. “Now we can go on with our lives.”þþJudge Cote issued an 80-page decision on Thursday as well as a lengthy injunction ordering, among other things, that the nursing home reinstate the strikers, bargain in good faith and stop its unusual practice — which was common a century ago — of pressuring employees to resign their union membership. þþJudge Cote upheld nearly all of the charges that the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board had brought against Kingsbridge Heights.þþShe wrote that “the vast majority of the terms of the proposed injunction simply require Kingsbridge to cease and desist from engaging in clear violations” of the National Labor Relations Act.þþSeveral labor lawyers said it was highly likely that the strike would end next week and that the home would reinstate the workers because failure to do so might put Kingsbridge Heights in contempt of the injunction.þþ“This is a huge step towards victory,” said George Gresham, president of the union. “This ongoing strike has taken a tremendous physical, emotional and financial toll on our members. Their spirit and passion has carried them and their families through these long months. Today’s injunction vindicates their struggle.”þþThe owner of Kingsbridge Heights, Helen Sieger, did not respond to a phone message left at the nursing home on Thursday. Nor did her lawyer in the labor case, John T. McCann, respond to phone messages.þþMs. Sieger was arrested last week on felony charges after state officials accused her of not paying the workers’ compensation insurance for nearly a year. Ms. Sieger, who faces up to four years in prison, pleaded not guilty, her lawyers asserting that she had made good-faith efforts to purchase insurance.þþThe National Labor Relations Board’s request for an injunction was an unusual move that board officials take only when they believe there are serious labor law violations. Judge Cote issued the injunction after concluding that the labor board and 1199 were likely to prevail in their case before a labor board administrative law judge.þþCoincidentally, on the same day that Judge Cote issued her ruling, the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, issued a proclamation praising Audrey Smith-Campbell, who died in May after working as a certified nursing assistant at Kingsbridge Heights for 29 years. After her health insurance was cut off, Ms. Smith-Campbell stopped paying $600 a month for asthma medication and died of cardiac arrest soon after suffering an asthma attack.þþThe workers went on strike in February because they had been working without a contract for nearly three years and because the nursing home had stopped paying health insurance premiums last August. As a result, 1199’s benefits fund cut off health insurance in November.þþ
Source: NY Times
