CHICO, Calif., Aug. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- When: 3:45 p.m. press conference Tuesday, August 23, 2005 Where: Main Entrance, Enloe Medical Center Chico, CA
On Tuesday, employees will hold a press conference announcing the date of a planned strike against the Compass group at Enloe Medical Center. The press conference will be immediately followed by employees hand delivering the legal notice of the unfair labor practices strike to Compass and also Enloe Administrators. Many community leaders will attend the press conference to show their support for the dietary and environmental services health care workers at Enloe Medical Center. The delivery of the strike notice and announcement of the planned strike date will be one of the most significant developments in the long struggle of low paid healthcare workers (many of whom have no healthcare for themselves) at Enloe. The health care workers have been in bargaining for over a year with their employer with no contract settlement.
Over 120 dietary and environmental services employees, members of the Service Employees International Union, United Healthcare Workers West, will participate in the strike. These employees work at Enloe Medical Center, and were subcontracted out by the hospital in June 2003 to two different subsidiaries of the multi-national Compass Corporation: Compass Morrison Management Specialists (dietary workers) and Compass Crothall (environmental services).
As a result of being subcontracted, employees lost shift differentials, extra pay for working on holidays, health care benefits, accrued sick leave benefits, vacation accrual rate and retirement plan.
About half of the employees at the Medical Center have no health care coverage for themselves and their children. In fact, children of many fulltime Compass employees working at Enloe Hospital are on public assistance for health care coverage. Enloe is even garnishing the wages of some employees for emergency bills from Enloe.
The one-day strike will be held in response to numerous unfair labor practices committed by the employer including discrimination against union supporters, not bargaining in good faith and intimidation of employees for exercising their rights as union members.
SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, with more than 140,000 members, is the largest and most powerful healthcare union in the Western U.S. We represent every type of healthcare worker, including nursing, professional, technical and service classifications. Our mission is to achieve high quality healthcare for all.
Media Contact:
Kathleen Miller, 510-773-7102
SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West
CONTACT: Kathleen Miller of SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West,+1-510-773-7102
Web site: http://www.seiu-uhw.org/
