Aides Strike Over Wages At Care Center Administrator Says Company Ready To Hire New People

Striking workers at Shoshone Living Center have spent the past two nights on the pavement. They say they’ll picket around the clock until the company grants them higher pay.

“We work 24 hours a day at this facility; we might as well strike 24 hours,” said Linda Dionne, a certified nurses aide. “We’ll keep it up as long as it takes to prove it’s not a joke.”

Drivers in passing autos honk in support. Some residents have come out to visit or to pace the sidewalk with the strikers.

But inside, administrator Kathy Joy said she was surprised by the employee walkout.

Shoshone Living Center is owned by Hillhaven Corp., one of the largest nursing home chains in the country. Earlier this year, the Kellogg nursing home received a Gold Award, an honor given only to a handful of Hillhaven’s 300 facilities.

“It’s a difficult thing to achieve, and these people did it - including the ones carrying signs out there,” said Joy. “I’m sorry it had to come to this. I appreciate our people and the good work they do.”

Since the strike began, the center has hired some new workers and has borrowed staffers from other Hillhaven sites to care for patients.

Thirty-four of the nursing home’s 91 employees are organized under the United Steelworkers of America. They’ve been bargaining with the company since late February.

“I felt we weren’t way off in the negotiations,” Joy said, adding that the company successfully had resolved 30 economic and 69 noneconomic issues raised by the strikers.

Hourly wages were the sticking point. The pickets claim the nursing home pays its CNAs substantially less than nurses aides make elsewhere in the Silver Valley.

“They just finished about $120,000 worth of remodeling, but they can’t afford to pay us,” said Sue Morrison, who’s worked there for almost 21 years.

“We won an award, and got a gold pin you couldn’t hawk for a pack of cigarettes,” said Phillip Beeman, another CNA.

The striking workers make in the neighborhood of $5 to $7 per hour. They want an 80-cent-per-hour raise; 40 cents now, the rest in August.

Hillhaven is offering them a 10 percent raise over the next three years.

Joy said employees received anywhere from a 5 percent to an 11 percent raise last summer, bringing their wages into line with the Silver Valley’s other major nursing home.

“I hope we’ll be able to reach a solution, but the company’s position is that they’ve reached their final offer,” Joy said. “They’re ready to hire new people.”

Morrison encourages her fellow picketers with her memories of the local’s only other strike. After a week, the strikers obtained sick leave, vacation pay, and recognition as a bargaining unit.

“That’s how I know it works,” she said. That strike took place about 14 years ago, when the nursing home was owned by a different company.