The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 27 began picketing a Wilmington nursing home this week as contract negotiations drag on with new management.
The three-year contract with workers at Kentmere Nursing and Rehabilitation Center expired in February, and negotiations for a new one are at an impasse. During the most recent bargaining session, management walked out on UFCW negotiators. The union's bargaining unit is currently working under an extension of the last contract.
Spokespeople representing the roughly 60 UFCW members working at the facility claim new leadership — an administrator hired last year — hasn’t been prepared to answer questions during negotiations, and shop steward Luis Ortega says other sticking points remain, including fair wage concerns and a proposed contract clause the union argues would give management too much authority to set work rules without union input.
“We feel that the management clause she wants is essentially meant to take the union out [of the decision-making process]," he said. "We wouldn’t have authority, no say – workers wouldn’t have protection.”
Zakieah Buchanan, also a UFCW shop steward, also pointed to the new manager's decision in February to adopt a new employee healthcare plan without union input as a cause for concern. She argues the plan — a so-called Individual Health Reimbursement Arrangement — places an outsize outsized burden on older workers, who make up a significant share of the facility’s workers.
“Myself, I’ve been here ten years," she said. "We have people who have been here for 25 years. We have a lot of dietary aids who have been year for 30-plus years. We have a lot of longevity in the building.”
Nearly a third of the UFCW's bargaining unit at the center are over the age of 50, and a quarter of the unit have worked at the center for more than 10 years.
Buchanan says the union didn't run into the same challenges during past negotiations with prior management; the union's newly filed unfair labor practice complaint is the UFCW's first against Kentmere Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
Delaware Public Media has reached out to Kentmere Nursing and Rehabilitation for comment on the dispute.
Meanwhile, UFCW launched an informational picket outside the facility Tuesday; unlike a strike, the picket doesn’t involve a work stoppage. The demonstration has the backing of Delaware’s AFL-CIO, and the unions plan to hold a rally with lawmakers in late April if the stalemate continues.
This is the first picket held by the UFCW in Delaware in more than a year. The union represents workers across a broad range of industries, including nursing homes in all three Delaware counties.
