Why the Largest Unorganized Bay Area Nursing Facility Is Unionizing

Alameda Healthcare & Wellness Center, a skilled nursing facility, is the only non-union nursing home in Alameda, and one of the only non-union nursing homes of its size — roughly 150 workers and 159 beds — in the entire Bay Area. Workers set out to change that this week with a three-day picket line in front of the facility, demanding that management recognize their decision to unionize with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2015. Workers on the picket line, which did not include a work stoppage, chanted “Up with the workers! Down with the bosses! Up with the residents! Down with the bosses!” Workers we spoke with emphasized that they’re fighting not just for better wages and benefits, but for compassionate patient care.

The nursing facility is owned by Shlomo Rechnitz, a billionaire whose fortune is largely derived from public Medicare funds paid to his network of approximately 88 California nursing homes. Rechnitz and his various corporate entities — which are responsible, by one estimate, for 1 out of every 14 nursing home beds in the state — have faced a raft of allegations of systematic mismanagement, destructive cost-cutting, and patient neglect in their long-term care facilities, including Alameda Healthcare. In a recent lawsuit over a patient’s death at the facility, a jury found Alameda Healthcare guilty of 1,437 violations of the nursing home Residents' Bill of Rights and awarded $7.6 million to the plaintiffs.

The California Attorney General calls Rechnitz’s primary company, Brius, a “serial violator of rules within [California’s] skilled nursing industry.” A class action lawsuit filed by a former Brius nursing home resident alleges that Brius and Rechnitz “chronically understaffed their facilities with an inadequate number of staff to carry out the function of their facilities” and “did not devote sufficient financial resources to protect the health and safety of residents and ensure resident rights were not violated, and instead diverted those resources to create ill-begotten profits.”

“Something needs to be changed,” said Mayom, a respiratory therapist who cares for patients on ventilators in the facility’s sub-acute unit, and who gave only his first name. “The thing we need is someone to take action ... and make sure employees are being supported. We want to get the job done.” Mayom said he felt that his job — to care for very ill patients, some but not all of whom are eventually able to leave the facility and resume their lives — was rewarding, but that high staff turnover and supply shortages in his unit sometimes made his work especially difficult.

Workers at Alameda Healthcare face a set of problems common to workers at many long-term care facilities: long hours, understaffing, the challenges of pursuing professional training and credentials on top of demanding work schedules, and upper management whose expertise lies in cost-cutting and public relations, rather than in patient care. Even so, unionizing workers said that their facility’s issues felt particularly acute. Workers described ongoing, turbulent staff and managerial turnover. Arbitrary suspensions and firings are common, they said, and several new head administrators have been hired in quick succession over the past few months, including one just days ago. Workers also said pay-raises have been woefully infrequent, with some workers receiving only one or two in the course of decades-long careers at the facility. Precious Morris, a Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN), described the infrequency of pay-raises as “unfortunate and sad, [since] the cost of living goes up every year.”

Alameda Healthcare did not respond to Current’s request for comment.

Low wages force many Alameda Healthcare staff to work additional jobs or excessively long hours in order to get by, workers said, and systematic overwork tends to compromise patient care. “The nurses need to be taken care of, the employees, all staff, from the nurses down to the janitors, housekeeping…. It needs to be taken care of so we can better help our residents,” Morris said. “If we're struggling to make ends meet outside in the world, our focus isn't where we are [at work], it's on the struggles that we're dealing with, you know?”

“The nurses need to be taken care of, the employees, all staff, from the nurses down to the janitors, housekeeping…. It needs to be taken care of so we can better help our residents,” Morris said. “If we're struggling to make ends meet outside in the world, our focus isn't where we are [at work], it's on the struggles that we're dealing with, you know?”

Meanwhile, Rechnitz has amassed over $1.3 billion in assets, according to his testimony at Alameda Healthcare’s recent civil trial.

Alameda Healthcare workers’ union drive with SEIU 2015 began in 2021 and has ramped up over the past few months. The temporary closure of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during the recent government shutdown led workers to pursue a more aggressive strategy than they might otherwise have taken. After successfully circulating a petition to unionize and announcing their decision to management, they chose to picket for recognition as soon as possible, rather than wait to apply to the board for a union election.

The executive board of SEIU 2015 has sanctioned a possible strike at the facility, and even though the Alameda workers are not yet union members, the union has opened its strike fund for them. The reopening of the government means that workers will soon also have the option to hold a legally binding union election.

SEIU 2015 president Arnulfo de la Cruz said in a statement, “Care workers at Alameda Healthcare & Wellness are standing up because they know their worth. When workers speak out for better conditions, they’re speaking out for better care for every resident in that facility. SEIU Local 2015 is with them every step of the way until their voices are heard and their rights are respected.”

Morris said she’s optimistic about the outcome of their union drive, but she added that the fight extends beyond her workplace. “I'm more than just an individual, you know, or I'm more than just a nurse here fighting and trying to help residents and patients,” Morris said. “I'm also here trying to help my fellow co-workers and the future nurses that are coming up after us.”