Aliyya Swaby Photo
Protesters in front of 333 Cedar St.
Elia Vollano marched to work Thursday evening with 1,000 fellow union members, in the hope that she and her colleagues will still have jobs.
Vollano, a unionized account assistant for 20 years, fears she will lose her job and benefits at Yale Medical Group in an announced pending wave of university layoffs.
So she joined more than 1,000 UNITE HERE Local 34 clerical and technical workers and community and union allies who marched from downtown to the Yale Medical School at 333 Cedar St. Thursday evening to rally to keep their unionized jobs and the benefits that accompany them. Blue-collar Local 35 members, who turned up in large numbers at the rally, fear similar job cuts elsewhere at Yale.
At 333 Cedar St.
They rallied in the face of an announcement that an unspecified number of layoffs, believed to be around 100, are indeed coming at the medical group practice.
About half of the protesters Thursday evening gathered at College and Elm Streets at around 5 p.m. and slowly made their way from downtown to the medical school.
“What do we want?” organizers called out to the crowd.
“Job security!” they called back.
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
Vollano, Evans, Mathis.
Union leaders and medical staff argued that the university is not cutting the jobs to run a smaller operation, but rather to hire non-unionized workers through Yale New Haven-Hospital at a cheaper rate. The School of Medicine is part of Yale University, and unionized; Yale Medical Group, a 1,400-plus member faculty group practice, is part of Yale University. Yale-New Haven Hospital is technically a separate (though intertwined) entity and non-unionized.
University representatives said that anticipated layoffs at the School of Medicine are not related to hires at the hospital. Instead, they grow out of a need to do more work with less money in a fluid funding environment.
Yale Medical Group relies on two sources of revenue: money from payers, including Medicaid; and income from a shared services agreement with Yale-New Haven Hospital, said university spokesperson Tom Conroy. State Medicaid payment cuts of $160 million to Yale-New Haven Hospital are passing along a 7 percent reduction to services at the School of Medicine across all clinic departments, with a $1.8 million cut to Yale Medical Group, he said.
Another anticipated $7 million cut comes from the Northeast Medical Group canceling a billing services contract with Yale Medical Group, he said. Plans for how to balance the budget must be made in mid-May before the new fiscal year starts July 1.
Vin Petrini, senior vice president of public affairs at Yale-New Haven Hospital, said after the rally that no such plan exists. The layoffs are a direct effect of state cuts, he said.
“The decisions that are made at the state level like that have real and unfortunate implications. You can’t really continue to tax hospitals and slash payments without impact,” he said.
Organizers Thursday argued Yale had been working to decrease unionized positions for several years.
Carrying large red signs that read “Yale: Protect Our Jobs,” protesters marched down College Street toward the Hill neighborhood, drawing glances and attention from people on the sidewalks and even inside the restaurants they passed. The other half of the protesters awaited them at South Frontage, cheering and whooping as the marchers approached.
The two groups merged into each other and continued to head toward the medical school, where a giant stage and a banner had been readied for the main event.
Kennington.
The event was part of a movement urging Yale to protect the “986 clinical jobs in the medical school and more broadly to really emphasize to Yale that job security is our number one priority in the contract. Because both sides of campus, [Locals] 34 and 35, are experiencing the squeeze of our jobs as they try to downgrade and undermine the number of good union jobs around town,” said Local 34 President Laurie Kennington.
“Everything about the work we do is expanding,” Kennington said. “Somebody has to do that work. …The question is, ‘Who is going to do them?’”
Thursday, clerical and technical workers in the dermatology department learned they would see two layoffs, Kennington said at the rally.
Rebecca Corbett, chief union steward in that department, said administrators called them into a meeting to announce one person working in the lab and another working in administration would be laid off. “They haven’t told us who,” she said.
More Work, Less Money
Mathis takes a video as one contingent heads to merge with another at South Frontage and College Street.
Yale Medical Group Chief Executive Officer Paul Taheri and Chief Administrative Officer Fred Borrelli met with employees April 14 at 300 George St. to discuss the potential layoffs. Though the group is attracting more patients each year, that revenue does not totally offset the loss of funding and services, they wrote, in a document sent Conroy sent to the Independent.
Click here to read the full question and answer.
“How do you grow a practice when you are getting fewer dollars for services? We are going to have to develop new ways of doing things that are more efficient and effective,” they wrote.
Vollano, who works in patient financial services, said she doesn’t understand why her job is at risk, if it seems as though her workload is increasing with more patients being billed.
Vollano makes $29.77 per hour at her job. She has a senior in high school who will be attending college in September. If she loses her job, she loses college tuition reimbursement through the Scholarship Plan for Sons and Daughters that Yale offers its staff and faculty. She and her husband cannot afford to pay the $1,000 for her husband’s health insurance, so the family depends on hers, she said. She worries about losing that, too.
This week, the department has had meetings discussing the budget and the potential of cutting jobs, she said.
Labor leader Proto at rally.
Yvonne Evans makes $28 an hour in the neurology and neurosurgery department in the Yale Physicians building, where she has worked for eight years. Before this, she worked in a non-union job in private practice and made $11 an hour.
She took in two granddaughters and her adult son several days ago, and she fears losing benefits and high pay.
Kimberly Mathis, who works with patients in the ear, nose and throat department at Yale Medical Group, said she helps doctors with procedures for about 20 to 50 patients per day. She takes their vitals and gets the room set up.
She said it already feels as though the department is short on staff to deal with the volume.
“I want Yale to put it in writing and stop saying it’s in our heads. It can’t be in all of our heads,” she said to the crowd Thursday at the rally.
According to the question and answer document, about 70 percent of Yale Medical Group’s costs cover employees. Those costs increase disproportionately quickly compared to the revenue. Therefore, a hit on revenue would have to impact staff.
Murphy.
Taheri and Borrelli wrote that they were pursuing other ways of cutting costs and boosting revenue, including collecting more copays at the time of service and assessing the use of overtime. They are reducing fixed costs such that related to IT, by about $3 million.
Kennington said the hospital has a plan to “take over as much as they can take over.” The question is, “will the university hold up its commitment to us and our contract” to keep unionized jobs? she asked.
“We cost money and I’m proud of the money we cost,” she told the protesters Thursday. “Their new plan is instead to shrink our numbers…Are we going to look the other way?” A resounding no roared back up to her on the stage.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy addressed the rally Thursday. “Any time good jobs are at stake, that matters to me,” he said. “You are fighting for everyone in the state at risk of layoffs.”
Barbara Vereen, who used to work at Yale Medical Group and now is a Local 34 chief steward, said Yale staff want it to be the best place for securing jobs for New Haven community members.
She said she sat in more than two dozen meetings in 11 departments where layoffs were discussed. But in all those discussions, leaders also mentioned institutional growth, bringing in many more patients to different departments and centers associated with Yale Medical School.
“‘What 986?’ That’s what they say to us,” she said Thursday. “The very next day, they sent out a newsletter saying they were going to lay off 150 people.
“Shame on Yale!” one man in the crowd yelled back to her.
Local 35 leaders joined Local 34 in the rally because they worry their own jobs are at risk on the other side of Yale’s campus.
Walker.
Local 35 Secretary-Treasurer Tyisha Walker called on Yale to “come to the table” and keep jobs secure for unionized staff. “We are not turning back,” she said. “You might have money but we got people.”
Local 35 President Bob Proto said the united contingent will not rest until more jobs were created for the local community, until Yale graduate students have a union recognized by the university, and until job security are guaranteed for Local 34 and 35 union members.
Facing the medical school, he led thousands in a chant addressing Yale leaders: “We are Yale! We’ll be back!”