Laurel Hill workers decide to strike

WINSTED — Dozens of workers were expected to go on strike this week at Laurel Hill Healthcare and other nursing homes throughout the state after union representatives and the nursing home’s management company failed to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.

New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199, informed Spectrum Healthcare, the Vernon-based agency that runs the 108 East Lake St. facility, that union members employed by the company would strike and picket beginning Thursday, April 15, at 6 a.m. if no collective bargaining agreement was reached by that time.

Some 400 employees in all could go on strike at four of Spectrum’s six nursing homes in Connecticut — Birmingham Health Center in Derby, Hilltop Health Center in Ansonia, Park Place in Hartford and Laurel Hill.

The union, whose contract with Spectrum expired in March 2009, has 62 members employed at Laurel Hill.

Although federal mediators were called in earlier this week to help bridge the gap between the company and the union, District 1199 Communications Director Deborah Chernoff told The Journal Wednesday morning, “We did not make any real progress at the table� during Tuesday’s negotiations in Ansonia.

She said that Spectrum refused to set any new time slots for additional negotiations before the strike deadline.

“It is our expectation that we will be on the picket line tomorrow morning,� Chernoff said Wednesday.

In response to the threat of a strike, Spectrum has been running help wanted advertisements in local daily newspapers. The ads say the company seeks to hire “permanent replacement employees to work due to a potential labor dispute.�

Laurel Hill administrators did not respond to calls from The Journal requesting comment on the possibility of a strike.

In a letter posted on its Web site April 5, however, Spectrum stated that it is “currently negotiating in good faith to reach a fair and reasonable labor agreement� with the union and that the company is “fully prepared to continue to provide uninterrupted quality, safe care to all of our patients.�

The union said it has reached recent agreements with several other nursing home companies that include a 2.5-percent wage increase in the second year and “improvements in the cost of health insurance coverage.�

Thompson added that, so far, Spectrum has refused “to agree to similar terms.�

She said that the union also has concerns regarding health and safety issues at the sites. The union has begun a television advertising campaign that highlights those concerns.

The Journal will post an update to this story on its Web site Friday, April 16.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less