Nursing Home Residents and Families, Labor, Community Rally with Striking Spectrum Caregivers

• Current and former residents speak out on care before and after strike
• Labor organizations, elected leaders, rally around nursing home workers
• Unions cite Unfair Labor Practices, hiring permanent replacements as “an injury to all”
• Employer: no negotiations until May 3rd

In the second week of an Unfair Labor Practice strike by almost 400 nursing home caregivers employed by Spectrum Healthcare, labor organizations around the state joined current and former residents of Spectrum nursing homes to support the striking workers.

Nursing home residents praised the high quality of care they received at the Park Place Health Center prior to the strike, describing the very different conditions that now prevail with caregivers on the picket line and replacement workers in the facilities.

Said David Granger, a resident at Park Place, told reporters. "Half the clothes we send in there they lose. That wasn’t a problem before, that or the shortage of food… We usually get our food around 11:30, now we don’t get it until 1:00. They are definitely running late. If they had the usual cooks in there and the usual people, we’d get our food on time. The folks in there now don’t know what they are doing.”


Other labor unions, community organizations and elected leaders joined members of District 1199, the state’s largest union of health care workers, at the rally outside the Park Place Health Center to protest Spectrum’s unfair labor practices, and the company’s threat to permanently replace Spectrum workers for exercising their legal right to strike.

Hartford State Senator John Fonfara offered these words of support: “I support these workers and I support this union. There are people who have worked in this facility for 30 years, given their life to make this a “five star facility”--that the company offers in their ads as a reason people should put their trust in this facility for their family members. This facility has benefited from the dedication of these workers—doing work that most people don’t want to do. They recognize the hard times, and they are asking for fairness. They’re going to be out here as long as it takes, and I’m going to be out here with them in solidarity to make this happen.”

Late on Thursday, April 22, attorneys for Spectrum confirmed a first date of May 3rd for a return to contract negotiations but only for one of the facilities, Laurel Hill in Winsted. Park Place in Hartford will resume contract talks on May 10th; Spectrum has not yet agreed to dates for the other two facilities



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