The workers are demanding higher wages, hazard pay and better staffing.
Around 700 workers in 11 nursing homes run by Infinity Healthcare Management are entering their second week on strike. The workers, who are part of SEIU Healthcare, are demanding higher wages, hazard pay and better staffing. They are also demanding PPE, which is in short supply and could mean life or death for the elderly as well as for the workers. Many of whom are women, and they are overwhelmingly people of color. These sectors are disproportionately represented among essential workers, and are also disproportionately underpaid and treated as expendable. Roslyn Regans has worked at Lakeview Nursing and Rehab Center for 15 years. She is a cancer survivor and in a high risk category for Covid-19, as her immune system is still compromised. Yet, she continues to go to work day in and day out, without hazard pay and for obscenely low wages. “We are striking right now. It’s the last thing we wanted to do, but we resorted to it because we couldn’t reach an agreement with one of the owners… We are very short staffed right now. Even before the pandemic we were short-staffed. And we’re short staffed because of the wages we are making.” The base pay at the homes owned by Infinity Healthcare Management is $13.30. Regans, who has worked at the center for 15 years, only makes 17.35 dollars an hour. Workers are demanding a two dollar raise, but the company is refusing. Infinity Healthcare Management is owned by Envision Healthcare Corporation which is in turn owned by KKR & Co. Inc., a private equity firm which posted a profit of $1.06 billion and is worth $21.7 billion on the stock market. KKR pays its billionaire executives upward of $200 million, and the CEO of Envision earns in excess of $7 million a year — and in 2016 made over $21 million.
