About 2,000 Connecticut group home workers will strike on Friday unless an 11th-hour deal on wages and benefits is reached
About 2,000 unionized workers at privately run group homes across the state will walk off the job Friday unless an 11th-hour agreement can be reached over wages and benefits.
The workers have been negotiating with group home operators for weeks now and already agreed once to delay their planned strike. But with the parties still apart on key issues as of late Thursday, plans for the walkout are taking shape.
Group homes have begun bringing in replacement workers and some have moved residents to vacant nursing home beds. Meanwhile, the union has designated 12 picketing locations across the state.
“We cannot preserve a labor model for group home long-term care services that relies on poverty wages,” said
Two top aides to Gov.
“Talks remain constructive but the homes also have in place their statutorily required plans to ensure that the highest standard of care is provided to their residents in the event of a work stoppage,” said
The governor’s office was instrumental in helping to broker a deal between the same union and nursing home operators in May that prevented a strike. Like the nursing home workers, the group home employees are seeking better wages and benefits and more staffing.
A group home pact seemed likely last month as well and the union decided to postpone its strike, which had initially been scheduled for
“We need to reach parity with nursing home workers to pull poor Black, brown and white working women out of poverty,” Baril said Thursday. “Caregivers risked their lives during COVID-19.”
The union is pushing for a
“Community nonprofits who contract with the state to provide a wide range of services, including group homes for people with disabilities, have operated without a funding increase for more than a dozen years,’' he said. “Every year we’ve advocated for better funding so that providers can pay the people who staff their agencies a decent wage.”
The strike notice “underscores the overwhelming need for the historic seven-year investment of
The group home workers represented by the union include support staff, program coordinators, residential day program workers, assistant teachers and licensed practical nurses.
They provide care to people with disabilities at 200 group homes across the state owned by six private, nonprofit providers: Oak Hill, Network, Whole Life, Mosaic, Journey Found and Sunrise.
©2021 Hartford Courant. Visit courant.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Asian Business Headlines at 2:54 a.m. GMT
Author Lee Dion's new book “Law in Flames” is an intense and suspenseful novel about a deadly hotel fire and one man's job to solve this mysterious tragedy
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News