Tagged: unions

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Five Connecticut nursing homes have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization after the U.S. Supreme Court denied their management company's request to delay a court order to reinstate 600 striking workers.

HealthBridge Management LLC announced Monday that the homes filed Chapter 11 papers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark, N.J., Sunday. Patient care won't be affected.

The Parsippany, N.J., company cited "unsustainable" pension and medical benefit costs for workers with District 1199 of the New England Health Care Employees Union.

Striking nursing home workers in Connecticut are hopeful about returning to work after five months on the picket lines, but the company that owns the homes is fighting a judge's order to reinstate the workers by Monday.

About 50 of the 600 striking workers rallied Wednesday outside Newington Health Care Center, one of the five homes owned by Parsippany, N.J.-based HealthBridge Management where workers are on strike. They cheered Tuesday's ruling by federal Judge Robert Chatigny.

Workers at Connecticut's largest utility may inch closer to a strike when they vote today and Friday on a contract offer that the union's leadership has recommended be rejected.

Union negotiators say workers and Connecticut Light & Power are still far apart on staffing and overtime issues.

If workers reject the proposed four-year contract, they will automatically authorize a strike. A work stoppage is by no means certain.

It appears that despite a spate of super-technical achievement, in which managers of America’s new computer-connected technology believe they can create or improve on just about anything, despots of American Capitalism are mounting an all-out campaign to destroy and subjugate Organized Labor.

My wife, Ann and I have fond memories of the time we lived in Wisconsin.  I got my Ph D from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  Ann, taught in the public schools and our son was born in Milwaukee.  We have always had a great deal of respect for the great progressive traditions of the State of Wisconsin.

Thus, when Governor Scott Walker introduced a budget bill into the State Legislature that would not merely cut pensions of government workers but strip them of all collective bargaining rights, I was heartened by the outpouring of opposition within the state.