Area Health Care Workers Picket After Sale To Cleveland Company

A group of nursing and rehabilitation center workers held an informational picketing session outside the Langhorne Gardens facility Friday afternoon.

The roughly 20 workers, who picketed are part of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, outside the Langhorne Manor facility urging management to come to a swift contract resolution. Union members at the facility have been working without a contract since April 1 when the sale of the facility to Cleveland-based Saber Healthcare Group was finalized.

The Langhorne Gardens SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania picket session was one of five held across Pennsylvania at Saber facilities.

Saber purchased Langhorne Gardens, Statesman Health and Rehabilitation Center on Trenton Road in Middletown, and other facilities in the Philadelphia region earlier this year. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the terms of the sale were not disclosed.

Saber, according to its website, operates 111 facilities across six states.

There are about 120 residents at Langhorne Gardens.

Union members said they knew the sale was coming, but the change in benefits rocked them. Health care costs rose, the continuing education fund was gutted, and to top it all off, the union workers are working without a contract, workers said.

“We deserve what we already had and more,” said Denise Lytes, a Philadelphia resident who has worked at the facility as a certified nursing assistant for about two years.

“We didn’t get what we had overnight,” she said. “We had to work very hard for it.”

The union and workers are set to go back to negotiations in mid-June. Caregivers argue that when they are preoccupied with fighting for their own needs, they are less well-equipped to serve the residents of the nursing and rehabilitation facility.

“If we do not get what we need, how can we focus on the residents?” Lytes asked.

The health care changes took an affordable insurance options for workers and made the prices too expensive for what workers can afford. With the removal of a continuing education fund, workers could have a much tougher time returning for further education.

“This might not be the only thing we have to do, there might be a real strike coming next,” said Wendell Royster, a representative from SEIU who was at the picket.

“We need the union to get the respect that we deserve. Without the union, the management will do whatever they want to us,” Lytes said.

Saber did not reply to a request for comment.