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Health Care Workers Plan Black-Tie Vigil in Chicago |
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The workers at Chicago’s Resurrection Health Care System and their supporters aren’t invited to the annual black-tie Monarch Ball fund-raiser March 11, but they will definitely be in the house. They plan to stage a rally and a vigil outside the hotel where the Windy City’s elite will be wined and dined and asked to write checks supporting one of the largest health care systems in the Chicago area.
The workers want to let the diners know their checks are helping to finance a vicious anti-union campaign by Resurrection management. The employees have been working with AFSCME Council 31 for more than three years to form a union. Resurrection management has responded with an aggressive, corporatewide, anti-union campaign to intimidate workers who speak up. Eight union supporters who were publicly active have been fired, according to Council 31.
Workers also have complained of being harassed, intimidated and watched. Lower-wage workers, many of them immigrants, have been told they will be fired or lose benefits if they support the union effort; others have been pressured to sign petitions stating they oppose forming the union, Council 31 says.
The union released a report last winter claiming that Resurrection is placing more emphasis on corporate growth and profits than quality care for patients. The report, based on interviews with nurses throughout the Resurrection system and data from public records and quality-oversight agencies, found serious lapses in patient care, higher prices for services and inadequate staffing.
But Resurrection workers say they will not be deterred from forming a union, and they will deliver a message to management to “respect your workers’ rights to form a union.”
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