UHW Nursing Home Workers Win Groundbreaking Contract with Horizon West
Earlier this week over 500 nursing home workers at six facilities ratified a new master contract with Horizon West, a for-profit company operating nursing, assisted living and retirement facilities throughout California and Utah. The agreement was reached after six months of contract negotiations led by an elected rank-and-file bargaining team and was settled on the eve of a strike at four homes.
This historic settlement includes a number of new standards for nursing home workers throughout the country and follows the pattern set by contracts won at Mariner Health Care and Sava Senior Care earlier this year. Key elements of the settlement include:
- Wage increases of up to 25% over three years and wage scales at all six facilities. These increases take a significant step toward closing the wage gap between hospital and nursing home workers in Northern California.
- Quality of Care Committees that will give frontline caregivers a role in staffing and other patient care decisions. These committees provide for 3rd party mediation if no agreement can be reached.
- Successorship language so that if a facility is sold the new owner must abide by the contract. While standard in many hospital contracts, this is an important first for the nursing home industry in California.
- Defined-benefit pension for workers.
- A Code of Conduct for organizing which will allow UHW to organize 18 non-union Horizon West facilities in Northern California without employer interference.
- Participation in the UHW Joint Employer Training and Upgrade Fund giving Horizon West workers the opportunity to participate in career ladder training and upgrade programs.
UHW members’ settlement with Horizon West stands in stark contrast to recent agreements reached between SEIU International and a number of nursing homes in Southern California. The SEIU settlements do not include many of these key standards won by UHW members, including wage scales to ensure equity, a defined-benefit pension plan, successorship protections or a code of conduct for organizing non-union workers. Most notably they do not establish quality care committees or any other real mechanism to give frontline caregivers a direct voice in patient care issues.
The Horizon West settlement clearly demonstrates that as long as workers are organized and leading the fight we can win groundbreaking contracts and continue to organize new workers in the nursing home industry without sacrificing patient care or other contract standards. This strategy greatly differs with the Nursing Home Alliance model advocated by many in SEIU in which key standards are sacrificed in return for limited opportunities to organize new homes. Download our critique of the Alliance- 2006 paper.
In fact, under just the agreements reached so far this year by workers at Mariner, Sava and Horizon West, UHW nursing home workers now have the opportunity to organize nursing home workers at 22 homes across California which is more than the number of homes UHW was able to organize under the prior Alliance model. Most importantly, newly organized workers will be granted full collective bargaining rights and the ability to have a real voice in their negotiations and their union.
Nursing-home leaders polish their skills
OAKLAND, Calif. – Over 70 leaders from the nursing home division, representing contracts up for negotiation, attended our Leadership Academy part 2 on April 2. Our leaders are building on their skills in order to lead this historic campaign and build a strong union at each one of their facilities. They lso reaffirmed their conviction that UHW shall lead this fight and no collusion between employers and SEIU will get in the way of accomplishing their bjectives. With a united membership they can win great contracts in upcoming negotiations.
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