Public Employee Press

Union: HHC "Road Ahead" is full of potholes

37 leaders spoke out at the recent annual meetings of the city's Health and Hospitals Corp. to warn that the agency's Road Ahead restructuring plan is full of potholes.

The plan to slash services and staff "contradicts HHC's mission to provide quality health care to New Yorkers in need," said DC 37 Director of Field Operations Barbara Edmonds.

Activists called the Road Ahead a path to hell at the November and December meetings held in HHC hospitals in Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. The plan downsizes and privatizes dialysis, direct patient-care services, environmental services and maintenance.

"This terrible plan erodes our public health-care system and hurts the patients, the community and the workers," Local 420 President Carmen Charles said.

"We were sorely tested by Superstorm Sandy but we pulled together to come through the ordeal," said Senior Assistant Director Moira Dolan of DC 37's Research and Negotiations Dept., who testified on behalf of Executive Director Lillian Roberts. Several local leaders and DC 37 Professional Division Director Nola Brooker also spoke, as did activists Albert Willingham of Local 768, Clive Davis of Local 420, and others.

"DC 37 members were among the thousands of heroic staff who stayed through the storm, or found ways to get to the hospital and care for patients," Dolan said. "Many Social Workers, Patient Care Associates and housekeeping staff stayed at their facilities for three or four days."

At Bellevue and Gouverneur hospitals workers laid out sump pumps and narrowly kept rising water from flooding generators. President Alan Aviles said HHC lost $10 million a day when the hurricane closed Coney Island and Bellevue hospitals. HHC workers at Kings County, Woodhull, Metropolitan, and Harlem hospitals somehow accommodated the surge of inpatients and emergency room patients transferred from the closed facilities.

"The Road Ahead is not helping us and not helping the community; our members are stretched to the limit doing more with less," Brooker said. "HHC contracted out laundry services to Sodexo but still needs DC 37 members to help the vendor get the job done," she said. HHC has laid off 2,500 DC 37 members, yet its privatized staff of midlevel managers is unfamiliar with civil service law, she said.

HHC cares for 1.3 million inpatients, 1 million outpatients and 450,000 uninsured New Yorkers yearly. As the ranks of the unemployed and uninsured swell, more New Yorkers rely on public hospitals in times of scarcity.

"Further privatization will drive down wages and lower the standard of living for all New Yorkers," Dolan said.

In addition to its ongoing campaign for more federal aid, DC 37 and a coalition of community and religious groups are working to stop further privatization of HHC services such as dialysis clinics.