The union members took advantage of the city’s generosity.
Those were the words of Alderman David Lenart last week week, referring to the workers still on strike outside the Birmingham Health Center on Chatfield Street on the Ansonia-Derby border.
The Derby Aldermen voted last Tuesday to tell the striking workers to remove items placed on city property outside the nursing home.
The move comes after residents in Ansonia and Derby complained that the strikers were clogging roads with their vehicles. Chatfield is already narrow due to the massive amounts of snow that has been dumped on the region this winter.
Ansonia put up “no parking” signs on Chatfield after residents complained about the strikers at a ward meeting.
Then, last week, Derby Police Chief Gerald Narowski said workers were “basically squatting” on Derby property.
There are at least two tents, a storage unit, a fire pit — along with a portable toilet Derby allowed there, Narowski said.
In addition, the strikers have created their own parking lot outside Birmingham Health Center.
“The entire area has been covered,” Narowski told the Board of Aldermen.
Lenart told the Valley Indy he was especially miffed about the accumulation of stuff on Derby property because the city has been supportive of the strikers, even giving them permission for the portable toilet.
The workers have not been squatting on Derby property, Deborah Chernoff, spokeswoman for SEIU Healthcare Workers Union Chapter 1199, said in an e‑mail.
The striking workers have been out all winter. They put up a tent to protect paperwork, Chernoff said.
Chernoff said she would look into the complaints coming from the city.
The workers at Birmingham — and at Hilltop Health Center in Ansonia — have been on strike since April 15, 2010.
They claim Spectrum Health, the company that owns the nursing homes, won’t give them a fair contract, something Spectrum has repeatedly denied.
The strike is technically over, since Spectrum refused an Aug. 31 offer from the union to return to work and keep negotiating, Chernoff said.
“The action is now a protest of the company’s legal violations, as outlined in the union’s complaint against the company with the National Labor Relations Board,” Chernoff said.
The union has a case pending in front of the National Labor Relations Board.
The union claims that Spectrum has been trying to kill the union at its nursing homes in Connecticut. Spectrum claims that’s not true and that the labor dispute has its roots in economic concerns only.
Click here to read a report on the dispute in the Hartford Courant.
Birmingham Health is on the Ansonia-Derby border. The road outside the facility belongs to Ansonia, while the property is in Derby.
A copy of the complaint filed against Spectrum is posted below.
