Caregivers at disabled group home striking over wages, affordable health insurance [Hartford Courant]

Caregivers striking at group homes around the state Tuesday say their path to the picket line follows years of working two and three jobs to afford health insurance and years of foregoing coverage altogether.

Anna Stacy Heyliger, who works at Sunrise Northeast Inc. in Hartford’s West End as well as a second health care group, doesn’t qualify for a state-subsidized plan and can’t afford the ones offered by her employers. At Sunrise, where contract negotiations have stalled over wage increases, pensions and health insurance, monthly premiums cost $3,800 to $6,000 per month, according to employees and their union, District 1199 New England, an SEIU affiliate.

As a result, workers like Heyliger go without.

Twice this summer, she paid out-of-pocket to take her 4-year-old daughter to walk-in clinics, and Heyliger, 29, hasn’t been to the doctor herself in years, even though a case of COVID-19 left her with shortness of breath, chest tightness and other long-lasting symptoms.

“I can’t go see anybody about that,” she said Tuesday from the picket line outside the Sunrise group home and day care program at 80 Whitney St.

Tuesday’s strike came after union health care workers failed to reach a contract agreement with Sunrise, a not-for-profit organization which operates 28 group home and day care programs staffed by 149 mostly female and heavily minority workers.

Nearly 1,000 union workers across the industry in Connecticut have signed new contracts with their group home and day program agencies. The increased benefits — including up to 90% reduction in health insurance premiums — will be subsidized by a $184 million funding package the state set aside earlier this year to reward chronically underpaid group home workers who risked their health by working through the pandemic.

The contract agreements resolved three strike threats. Sunrise is the lone holdout.

On Tuesday, Executive Director Dawn Frey said Sunrise applied for additional state funding last week and has reached a tentative agreement to increase workers’ wages.

“Our focus remains on reaching a fair contract that enables us to continue the good work our organization has done in Connecticut for years,” she said.

Picket lines also formed Tuesday at three other locations: 474 Route 87, Columbia; 729 Montauk Ave., New London; and 116 Hawkins St., Danielson section of Killingly.

“We try to be very reasonable,” said union spokesman Pedro Zayas. “Our members love their jobs. The problem is they have been extremely undervalued for decades, and in some ways they’ve been ignored because their jobs are a little bit invisible but also because they’re mostly women — Black and brown women and white, working-class women.”

For Carleen Grey, a caregiver in Hartford, circumstances are about to get more difficult. She’ll no longer qualify for Covered Connecticut, a no-cost program of the state health insurance exchange, when her son turns 18. Unless Sunrise changes its plan, Grey will try to get by without health insurance.

“This year I tried to do everything, my mammogram, because I don’t know when I’ll be going back,” she said.

Mary Strickland, also of Hartford, didn’t have health insurance her first few years working for Sunrise.

It was during that time, in 2015, that she suddenly lost the ability to walk straight. She couldn’t eat. She felt disoriented. Two hospital visits and a CT scan diagnosed her with a serious sinus infection and left her with more than $8,000 in medical bills.

“I just paid one off a couple of weeks ago,” she said Tuesday from the picket line. “I’m working on the other one.”

Strickland added, “I would have never come here but I got laid off in 2011 and got this job in 2012. I should have walked the other way.”

Toni Antico, of Waterbury, also lacked coverage her first three or four years at Sunrise. She racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills due to asthma. She works three jobs now to afford health insurance through the state exchange, Access CT, for herself and her 12-year-old daughter.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re health care workers and we can’t get health care,” she said. “We risk our lives every day and we can’t get anything. It’s terrible.”

Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.

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