LIVING WAGE COALITION IN THE NEWS

More Than 80 Sonoma Community Members Attend Forum on County's Nursing Home
Crisis:

Forum Participants Evaluate Evidence Against Sonoma Healthcare Center, Strategize How to Improve Care, Wages at Facility

by Kathleen Miller

On the evening of Thursday, September 18th, over 80 Sonoma County residents attended a community forum about the current crisis in Sonoma County's nursing homes. Community activists called for the forum because Sonoma's nursing home industry has become increasingly dominated by one corporation, the Ensign Group, which has a disturbing track record of putting profits before the needs of nursing home residents.

The community forum, held at First Congregational Church of Sonoma, sought to explore and evaluate the evidence against the Ensign Group and then choose a course of action that concerned Sonoma County residents could follow to ensure the highest level of care for their County's seniors.

The hearing's panelists, Shirlee Zane, Executive Director of the Council on Aging, Father Larry Carolan of St. Leo's Catholic Church, Michael Allen, President of the North Bay Labor Council and Sonoma City Council member Ken Brown, heard evidence regarding the need for area nursing homes to provide quality care, practice corporate responsibility and recognize their employees' right to join unions.

The Ensign Group currently owns over 27% of nursing home beds in Sonoma county. Ensign's own company literature details their plans to realize ever-greater revenues and cost savings by dominating the long-term care industry. Their Sonoma County facilities exhibit distressing examples of what happens when a company cuts corners in the long term care industry: last year, 83% of Ensign facilities located in Sonoma County failed to meet the minimum nursing staff requirement as mandated by California law (3.2 hours of direct nursing care per resident per day).

The Ensign Group's Sonoma County facilities also averaged 17 violations of federal resident care laws per home from May 2002 to August 2003---this is more than twice the national average of seven violations per home for that same time period.

The panelists and audience heard evidence presented from a series of expert witnesses who spoke about the efforts of nursing home workers to organize for change, patient care issues in the long-term care industry, and what managerial and corporate responsibility should be expected of the Ensign Group.

The first group of witnesses included Francisco Guerrero, a certified nursing assistant and employee at Ensign-owned Sonoma Healthcare Center, Reverend David McCracken, a Pastor at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Sonoma and founding member of the Interfaith Coalition in Support of Caregivers and Martin Bennett, an Instructor of History at Santa Rosa Junior College and co-chair of the Living Wage Coalition of Sonoma County.

They offered testimonials about the caregivers' attempts to organize to improve patient care and worker compensation. The workers voted to join SEIU 250, the Health Care Workers Union, in May 2002, but the Ensign Group has continually refused to recognize the union and bargain a fair contract with their workers.

The next group of witnesses included Fred Seavey, an SEIU 250 nursing home researcher and analyst, Stanford Horowitz, an attorney involved with nursing home and elder abuse litigation, Dr. Clinton Lane, a Sonoma physician and Ms. Ila Swan, the West Coast Executive Director of the Association of Protection of the Elderly. They discussed patients rights to receive adequate care at the Ensign Group's nursing homes.

Community member Klarise Davis also read an anonymous message from a worker at a Southern California nursing home that detailed the degenerating level of care at their facility since the home was taken over by the Ensign Group. At that home, the cost saving measures taken by the Ensign Group had resulted in residents being fed only a piece of toast and one sausage for breakfast, no hot food for dinner and sheets coming out of the wash with fecal matter still on them because of drastic cuts in staffing.

The final witness, Charles Goetchius, a member of the Executive Board of California United for Nursing Home Care, shared information about the alliance formed between other California nursing home chains, the Service Employees International Union and seniors advocacy organizations to work together to improve senior care in California.

The Ensign Group has chosen not to participate in this alliance and instead of working with caregivers, has wasted resident care dollars on an expensive corporate campaign to intimidate and silence their employees who voice concerns about patient care.

Caregivers at Sonoma Health Care Center voted to unionize over a year ago to try to improve conditions at the home and filed a lawsuit to try to bring dangerously low staffing levels in line with state requirements. The community and local clergy's support for the caregivers at Sonoma Health Care Center has been continual throughout their campaign to improve the quality of care at their facility.

In addition, a Sonoma City councilmember and two local clergy have privately written the CEO of the Ensign Group offering to help resolve the impasse between employees and management. None of the letters have been answered.

The City Council of Sonoma passed a resolution to support the workers' rights to form a union and called upon the Ensign Group to withdraw all objections to the National Labor Relations Board election that occurred a year and a half ago, and to meet with the union immediately to bargain a fair contract that will improve the lives of patients, caregivers and our entire community.

"Sonoma Health Care Center is a business located within the jurisdiction of our City Council, said Sonoma City Council member Ken Brown. Given the fact that this facility has been cited by the state for twice as many violations as the average nursing home and has done nothing to remedy the situation, I feel we community members needed to investigate their business practices, hear the evidence and decide on the appropriate course of community action to take. We owe it to our constituents to show that in Sonoma County, we expect the highest level of care for our seniors."

The panel of local labor, religious, and civic leaders evaluated the testimony and later issued a list of recommendations that were distributed to the media and elected officials in the region. The panel requested the Ensign Corporation to respect the right of workers to organize, improve workplace and quality of care standards, and called upon the company to develop a collaborative relationship with community stakeholders.

Kathleen Miller is Communications director for SEIU Local 250. For more information about the nursing home organizing drive contact Josh Weisman
at: jweisman@MAIL.SEIU250.ORG or 510-773-7497.



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LIVING WAGE COALITION OF SONOMA COUNTY
Phone: 707-623-7395
Email: livingwagesoco@gmail.com
PO Box 427
Santa Rosa, CA 95402