"Inside the Bitter Battle to Defend Workers and Patients at a Low-Income Clinic"

“When Whittier Street Health Center unveiled its glass-sheathed, six-story, environmentally-advanced, state-of-the-art, new facility in 2012, it was seen by its Boston community as a commitment to the neighborhood and the people it serves. With brightly painted walls and expansive views across the city, it sits at the heart of Roxbury, extending an invitation of convenience and care to a population that is mostly Black or Latinx and among the poorest and least healthy in the city.

Of Whittier’s patients, 91 percent live in poverty; 50 percent deal with food insecurity; two-thirds have been diagnosed with diabetes, hypertension, cancer, asthma or obesity; 35 percent of adults are without health insurance; and life expectancy for the area served is 58.9 years. Everyone agrees that this is a vulnerable population in need of highly trained, consistent and committed healthcare. Not everyone agrees that this population is getting it.

The reasons are a mix of difficulties shared by many community health centers, including political maneuvering, funding constraints and societal disregard for the poor. But some problems are distinct to Whittier: Staff and patients have complained that ill-advised, high-handed and destabilizing management practices interfere with and disrupt clinical care.”

NewspaperGuest UserJuly 30, 2019Healthcare Justice, Unions

"Stop & Shop Workers End 11-Day Strike With a Tentative Agreement"

“After more than a week of strikes, 31,000 workers at Stop & Shop, a major supermarket chain in the northeastern United States, will go back to work thanks to a tentative new contractwith their employer. The United Food and Commercial Workers announced that the proposed contract — which still requires a vote from union members to be ratified — ‘preserves health care and retirement benefits, provides wage increases, and maintains time-and-a-half pay on Sunday for current members.’

When the Dutch company Ahold completed its merger with the Belgian Delhaize Group in 2016, the resulting $29 billion company became one of the biggest supermarket chains across the entire United States. In addition to Stop & Shop, the company owns grocery stores like Giant and Food Lion, as well as grocery delivery services like Peapod.

Ahold-Delhaize boasted of massive savings to come from the merger, in addition to more than $200 million in savings last year alone from the 2017 Republican tax cuts. But rather than share that wealth with its workers, the company has returned roughly $4 billion in stock buybacks to enrich shareholders over the last few years.

Ahold-Delhaize itself said that the ‘best talent is key’ to its financial success in a media release of its 2018 earnings. And workers know that, too. ‘This is not a company in financial trouble,’ the UFCW said in a statement, pointing to Ahold-Delhaize’s $2 billion in profits last year.”

NewspaperGuest UserApril 22, 2019Stop and Shop, Unions, Strike