PEP, March 2009: HHC teams put HEAT on state cuts

The union’s Health Care Education Activist Team is fighting Gov. David Paterson’s budget plan that would cut $300 million in Medicaid funding from the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp., where more than 18,000 DC 37 members work.

HEAT activists are running a petition campaign through the spring against the cuts at HHC hospitals and mobilizing members for the City Hall demonstration at 4 p.m. on March 5, and the statewide Lobby Day and rally planned for March 31 in Albany by AFSCME, DC 37’s national union.

Doctors, patients and union members stopped by the busy HEAT table in the lobby of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Hospital Jan. 28. Local 420 member and Chapter Chair Ursula Josephs and Chief Shop Steward Lydia Cora passed out leaflets and encouraged everyone to sign their petition to stop the cuts.

“I’ll be there,” said Service Aide Rayfield Scott, as he signed the petition. Scott plans to join the rally in Albany. “I have to be there because I need my job,” he said.

The country’s economic meltdown presents serious financial challenges to HHC, which provides affordable, high-quality health care for some 1.2 million people. HHC officials were hoping that funds from President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan would improve the outlook for the city’s public health care system, but the governor seemed inflexible about the cuts.

In 2008, nearly 450,000 of the patients served by HHC were uninsured, an increase of more than 8 percent from 2007. HHC is struggling with a structural budget gap of $474 million and has imposed a hiring freeze and cut $1 million from a very successful HIV-testing program.

“The whole hospital is understaffed, and it is hiring people from outside agencies instead of union members,” said Local 420 member Dionne Bennett as she passed out flyers at Metropolitan.

Members of Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549 and Health Employees Local 768, who also work in the public hospitals, play an important role in the campaign. “The purpose of this campaign is to stop the cuts and to increase government revenue by making the rich pay their fair share of taxes,” said Ralph Palladino, 2nd VP of Local 1549. “This is the way to stop the cuts.”

—Alfredo Alvarado