SEIU CAMPAIGNS VS. FINANCE FIRM’S
TAKEOVER OF NURSING HOME CHAIN

Chanting “Patients over profits!”and “Better staff at Manor Care, no more money for millionaires!” more than 40 Service Employees from Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maryland protested a private financial firm’s $6.3 billion takeover of the nation’s largest nursing home chain, HCR Manor Care.

The Oct. 22 protest in front of the office building housing the private equity buyout firm Carlyle Group was designed to warn both the firm and the country that such takeovers come at a cost of patient care and workers’ incomes.

The protesters, who traveled from Toledo, Ohio, by bus, demanded that if Carlyle buys Manor Care, it be subject to several conditions, including promising in writing that Manor Care homes would obey federal rules on safe staffing. An SEIU spokesman said 90% of Manor Care homes now flunk those rules.

SEIU also demanded the right to organize the Manor Care chain, under a company neutrality agreement and with card-check recognition. “At any nursing home, patient care will improve when you have safe staffing, And allowing workers the freedom to choose a union is one way to improve care by ensuring safe staffing,” the spokesman explained during the demonstration.

The protest was part of the 1.8-million-member union’s ongoing campaign against the advancing privatization of nursing home services, led by private equity firms and their leveraged buyouts. That privatization, SEIU President Andy Stern told Congress earlier this year, not only harms patient care and workers’ jobs, but removes accountability from nursing home management, owners and operators.

The D.C. protest appeared to get at least one immediate result: SEIU announced later in the week that two other House committees, one concerned with financial issues and the other with interstate commerce, will hold hearings on the buyouts. But the committees’ websites did not confirm that commitment.

Corinne Falline, the sole Manor Care worker among the protesters--the others were home health care workers or worked in other nursing home chains--told Press Associates that “anything’s possible” if Carlyle buys Manor Care. “Care is already inadequate and might be even more so if staffing is cut” to increase profits to pay for the buyout, added Falline, an SEIU District 1199 East member who is a dietary worker at the Dulaney Township Nursing Home near Baltimore.

“I’ve seen one Certified Nursing Assistant at a nursing station to handle 120 residents, and that’s not right. We don’t have the supplies we need, and you can’t have good patient care if you don’t have happy workers,” she added.