Winsted strike continues

WINSTED — Although both sides have agreed to return to the negotiating table next week, striking union workers continue to picket outside Laurel Hill Healthcare, protesting the group’s lack of a new contract with the Winsted nursing home’s management company.

“We will continue to be up there and have a presence,� said Deborah Chernoff, communications director for District 1199 of New England Health Care Employees Union.

Union members took to the picket lines Thursday, April 15, at 6 a.m., after the union and Spectrum Healthcare — the Vernon-based agency that runs the 108 East Lake St. nursing home — failed to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.

Some 400 employees in all walked off the job at four of Spectrum’s six nursing homes in Connecticut: Birmingham Health Center in Derby, Hilltop Health Center in Ansonia, Park Place in Hartford and Laurel Hill.

The union, whose contract with the management company expired in March 2009, has 62 members employed at Laurel Hill.

Representatives from the union and the company, however, have agreed to resume collective bargaining talks at two locations next week, including Winsted. Laurel Hill union employees will meet with Spectrum this Monday, May 3.

The two sides are also set to meet at Park Place in Hartford on May 10. No dates have so far been set for the Derby or Ansonia facilities.

Tensions between the two sides during the strike have been high at times. A registered nurse who works at Laurel Hill was suspended April 17, after the nursing home’s management took pictures of her fraternizing with District 1199 employees on the picket line.

Union leaders called the suspension “outrageous� and a violation of the nurse’s constitutional rights.

When asked Monday what the current employment status of the suspended nurse was, Spectrum’s chief financial officer, Sean Murphy, said he did not want “to comment on a personnel issue.�

Murphy, however, told The Journal last week that according to the nurses’ contract with the company, they are not allowed to engage in any striking or picketing.

Registered nurses at Laurel Hill are employed under a separate contract and represented by a different union.

Earlier this month, with the threat of a strike looming, Spectrum hired dozens of permanent replacement workers after recently running help wanted advertisements in several local daily newspapers stating the company sought to hire “permanent replacement employees to work due to a potential labor dispute.�

Union leadership has said the hiring of permanent, as opposed to temporary, workers is a strong-arm tactic employed in an attempt to discourage employees from striking for fear of losing their jobs.

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