Michelle Cameron, a member of the desk staff at St. Mary’s Hospital for Children, carries a sign at the 2024 New York City Labor Day Parade. (Credit: Julia Shannon-Grillo)
Union members at a children’s hospital in Queens are moving toward a picket if their employers fail to match wage increases secured at other major health care facilities around the city. Workers say their current compensation leaves them torn between caring for their patients and going elsewhere for higher pay.
These 1199SEIU members work at St. Mary’s Hospital for Children, a long-term care facility in Bayside for children with complex medical issues. Union delegates met earlier in September, following a month of demonstrations directed at hospital management. Their goal is to strengthen support before voting to authorize an informational picket in coming weeks.
Over a year ago, 1199SEIU reopened its contract with the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes, an association of 99 nonprofit medical centers in the New York metropolitan area. Their new agreement increased the wages of hospital staff in the League by an average of 6% per year over three years.
But St. Mary’s is not a member of the League and instead holds a separate contract — one that grants its staff below-inflation raises of 3% for 2023 and 2024, according to a spokesperson for St. Mary’s. The contract is set to expire next fall. In the meantime, the union is asking St. Mary’s to match wage increases with the League, including a retroactive 4% raise for 2023.
“With the cost of living having gone up so much, we’re actually going backwards,” said Cynthia MacDonald, a registered nurse who said she has worked at St. Mary’s for 15 years.
MacDonald is one of around 75 employees who delivered a demand letter last month to Sean Lally, executive vice president of St. Mary’s. The staff have also been attaching sticky notes demanding better wages to the door of CEO Edwin Simpser’s office, and they recently organized a lunchtime sit-in in the hospital lobby. During a labor parade earlier this month, union members carried signs that read, “PAY UP ST. MARY’S” and “St. Mary’s Hospital: WE DESERVE MORE MONEY!” St. Mary’s staff have taped similar signs to their car windows to alert parents and donors who visit the facility.
Sasha Manning (left), the delegate for food service workers at St. Mary’s, marches alongside 1199SEIU organizer Vernon Dietz (center). (Credit: Julia Shannon-Grillo)
The hospital says it is seeking a resolution. “We are always in contact with union leadership, and as the expiration of our current contract approaches, we will work with them in good faith to achieve our shared goal of reaching an agreement that is fair, reasonable and sustainable,” a spokesperson for St. Mary’s wrote in a statement.
The spokesperson said that St. Mary’s is more than 90% funded by Medicaid and said reimbursement rates have not kept up with rising healthcare costs. St. Mary’s’ 2022 filing with the Internal Revenue Service showed the hospital generated around $112 million in revenue against $106 million in expenses.
The recent union action comes atop a long struggle to get St. Mary’s to participate in 1199SEIU’s pension fund alongside hospitals in the nonprofit consortium, MacDonald said. She has been involved with the union since its beginning at St. Mary’s.
“By 2010, I realized that we really, really needed a union. … And we had a very scared staff,” MacDonald said, adding that she organized union cards “in the bathroom so no one could know who was signing.”
Sasha Manning is a dietary worker who has been cooking for the children of St. Mary’s for three years. Manning is also the union’s delegate for food service workers at St.Mary’s. Today, she sees a much more public presence of 1199SEIU.
“We’re getting stronger,” Manning said. “And they’re getting a little nervous.”
Should union members decide to picket, one organizer said they will have to give St. Mary’s a 10-day notice. MacDonald expects a picket to be planned in the coming weeks.
“We’re the heart and soul of St. Mary’s,” MacDonald said. “If none of us came tomorrow, this building [and] our kids would not be cared for.”
About the author(s)
Julia Shannon-Grillo, originally from Vermont, is a Stabile investigative fellow at Columbia Journalism School. Her reporting focuses on health care and public policy.