Service Employees International Union Local 2015, a statewide union representing dozens of nursing home workers in Fresno and thousands across California, rallied to finalize a new contract outside Keystone Post Acute in Fresno on Thursday.<\/p>\n
A group of about a dozen organizers, participants and elected officials who made an appearance at Fresno\u2019s rally described the demonstration as an effort to bring Bayshire LLC \u2014 the Southern California-based health care company that supports the local facility \u2014 back to the table to finalize non-economic aspects of the new contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve kind of resolved the central piece of the contract,\u201d said Vicki Vang, an organizer with SEIU Local 2015 in the Fresno area. \u201cBayshire hasn\u2019t settled the non-economic piece of the contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe members are out here to make sure that they resolve some of the issues that they have here in the facility,\u201d she added, \u201cwhich is obviously understaffing.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in an email an hour into the rally, a co-owner and operator with the health care group, Benjamin Carter, said they\u2019d already reached an agreement with the union that the facility was \u201ceager to ratify.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are committed to continuing collaboration with SEIU,\u201d Carter added, \u201cto address employee concerns and reach mutually beneficial solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a brief interview Friday, Carter said that they had reached an agreement prior to Thursday.<\/p>\n
Union officials later added on Thursday that Keystone Post Acute reached out to them at some point during the rally to \u201creach an agreement.\u201d It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether this agreement was only over the non-economic aspects of the contract.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s demonstration followed others in Southern California<\/a> as SEIU looks to finalize its first-ever \u201cmultiemployer contract\u201d covering about 140 facilities in the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two members of the Fresno City Council \u2014 Annalisa Perea and Mike Karbassi \u2014 attended Thursday\u2019s rally, as did Supervisor Luis Chavez. SEIU Local 2015 endorsed Chavez<\/a> in his successful bid to oust incumbent Sal Quintero in the 2024 elections.<\/p>\n Chavez said it\u2019s important to build a stable workforce in local nursing homes to relieve pressure on other aspects of the local health care system.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t have the staffing levels at a nursing home to do a lot of the preventative work \u2014 medication, people that have diabetes, that had a stroke, that had an aneurysm, high blood pressure, asthma, respiratory problems \u2014 where do they end up? They end up in the emergency room,\u201d Chavez said, where patients in the Central Valley wait hours more<\/a> than the national average.<\/p>\n Richard Becerra, whose in-home caregiver is a member of SEIU Local 2015, also showed up to Thursday\u2019s rally. Becerra was hit by a car while crossing a road about a year ago. He said he can only stand for certain periods of time, but now that he\u2019s walking again, he uses his mobility to advocate for SEIU workers.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Ask and you shall receive\u2019 \u2014 that\u2019s what God said, and that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing,\u201d Becerra said of SEIU caregivers. \u201cThey deserve more wages, they sure do.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Service Employees International Union Local 2015, a statewide union representing dozens of nursing home workers in Fresno and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-167359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}