Medford Rehab employees picket over low wages
Employees have been picketing Medford Rehabilitation and Nursing Center for months over their wages.
By Daisy Levine
Employees have been picketing Medford Rehabilitation and Nursing Center for months over their wages.
Employees at Medford Rehab make an average of about $17 an hour, making them the lowest-paid unionized nursing home workers in the state. Medford Rehab is expected to meet again with SEIU 1199 to renegotiate contracts with SEIU 1199 on Wednesday, Oct. 22.
About 90 employees have been bargaining with Medford Rehab’s parent company, Personal Healthcare LLC, since June. It’s the first time Medford Rehab has seen pickets in over 30 years.
Marie Destrat said she’s fighting for her dignity.
“We’ll be back! We’ll be back! We’ll be back!” Destrat, a certified nursing assistant who lives in Medford, shouted while banging a drum at a picket this month outside the facility, where she’s worked for 35 years.
“They [the employer] don’t accept our offer, even when we lower what we ask for,” she said. “They still don’t want to give us something [of] value.”
Medford Rehab and Personal Healthcare LLC did not respond to multiple interview requests from Gotta Know Medford.
Destrat, who is nearing retirement, said she struggles to pay her rent. She said she’s worried this is all the money she’ll ever get from her workplace, whom she’s spent the better part of three decades with, working most days 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.
“We were trying to have our dignity…At least we can have dignity in something we can really survive with,” she said. “That’s why we’re pushing for more money. And I think we deserve it.”
Marie Mabois, a Medford Rehab employee for 11 years, said everyone she knows has thought about leaving. Mabois’ husband died recently, leaving her to raise her child on her own. She makes $16.37 an hour.
Mabois’ job as a housekeeper carries the facility through state inspections — they tell her to “Clean, clean, clean!” for state inspections but offer no reward once Medford Rehab passes, she said.
Even raising the housekeepers’ rate to $17 per hour would not be a livable wage, she said.
“It is not good,” she said. “Dunkin’ Donuts and Stop & Shop are $20.”
Lena Rodriguez, vice president of 1199 SEIU, said the workers are asking for respect, retirement benefits and higher wages.
“Medford Rehab should be investing in its workforce to support the essential work we do daily caring for residents,” Rodriguez wrote in a statement. “The low pay being offered to workers is a major contributor to the high turnover the center faces, which impacts the quality of care that residents receive.”
The facility’s nurse turnover rate is more than 15 percent higher than any other nursing home in the state, according federal data available on ProPublica.
Both Destrat and Mabois are immigrants from Haiti, who came to Massachusetts to find a better life. They said they picketed this month to chant, “Be fair, be fair, be fair to those who care.”
Daisy Levine is a journalism student at Boston University. This story is part of a partnership between Gotta Know Medford and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
