One week after Local 420 and DC 37 demonstrated to save 27 neighborhood health care facilities, the City Council came through with a budget that included the needed funds.

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

Their chant was loud and clear and intended to echo up to the executive suites of the Health and Hospitals Corp., where President Dr. Luis Marcos was finalizing plans to shut down 27 clinics in poor and immigrant neighborhoods throughout the city.

“We’re fired up! Won’t take it no more!” was the rallying cry of the 300 demonstrators who gathered May 31 at HHC’s Worth St. headquarters, demanding that Mr. Marcos keep the clinics open. Rank-and-file members and the leaders of Local 420 and DC 37 were joined by elected officials to protest the impending closings.

“The clinics must remain open,” said James Butler, president of Municipal Hospital Employees Local 420. “Our concern is the loss of services. Our members have children, and they have illnesses like asthma.”

Administrator Lee Saunders told the demonstrators that DC 37 would fight the cuts every step of the way. “We believe in a strong public health system, and we have the power of a 125,000-member union behind us,” he said.

Most of the clinics are in neighborhoods that serve uninsured families and low-income immigrants. More than half of the health care sites are in housing projects and elementary schools, where they provide basic first aid and preventive care to children, such as immunizations and vision and hearing tests. The city’s emergency rooms would be even more overburdened if these community-and school-based clinics were to be phased out.

Coalition for public health care
HHC, which oversees public hospitals and clinics, faces a budget deficit of about $300 million in the next fiscal year. Since 1994, HHC has folded up 3,500 hospital beds and eliminated 12,000 jobs. Union leaders, health care advocates and community activists have been meeting on ways to strengthen the finances of the public health system. “We are pressing the City Council to act, because health care for poor children and immigrant families is at a crisis stage,” said DC 37 City Hall lobbyist Lillie Cariño-Higgins May 30 at a coalition meeting.

At the rally the next day, three of the Democratic Party mayoral hopefuls and gubernatorial contender and State Comptroller H. Carl McCall spoke out for saving the clinics.

“For HHC to padlock these clinics is an insult to every New Yorker,” Public Advocate Mark Green told the crowd. “The last place you want to save money is at the expense of children,” said Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi. “What bothers me the most,” Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer told the crowd, “is the way they’re treating children and senior citizens. It’s not right, yet there’s money for baseball stadiums.”

And the fourth candidate, City Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone, “stood up for HHC and the clinics” in budget negotiations with the mayor, said DC 37 Deputy Administrator Eliot Seide.

Budget keeps clinics open
One week after the demonstration, the City Council and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani agreed on a new budget that allots $2.1 million to keep the 27 clinics open.

“This is a great victory for union members, the clinics and the people they serve,” said Kate Pfordresher of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept. “And it came about because of the pressure from the community and labor. Now we have to keep pushing so HHC gets the resources it needs to carry out its mission.”