On Monday morning, two hundred forty employees arrived at work at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. When they did, they were told they would no longer be working there, handed a letter, and basically told to hit the bricks. The probably didn’t come as a surprise to anyone; my mother’s been talking about them for months. What came as a surprise, however, was that the hospital came down on employees who dared to tell the media that they were disappointed that they no longer had a job.
An employee known as Janet spoke to CBS’ Sean Hennessey. She’s the first person introduced in the video embedded on their site. In her first quote, she says “I have no idea,” when asked what she was going to do. In the second clip of her at the very end, she said “My best wishes for everybody. We’re all in the same boat.” That’s it. That’s the extent of her commentary to the media. Not a bad word for the hospital in any way and not a single solitary thing spoken out of line.
So what does Brookdale Hospital do? They bring her up on disciplinary charges for talking to the media. Regardless of the fact that she didn’t say anything out of line, she’s now facing the prospect of having to go before a bunch of Human Resources tools to tell them that she doesn’t deserve this kind of crap, particularly on the day she was let go.
Now, of course, is the Union’s big chance to protect one of its own. Local 1199 can step in very quickly and put this to bed, but I’m not holding my breath on that one either. Local 1199 has stood by for months as Brookdale demolished buildings in the neighborhood for expansion while at the same time crying poverty and laying off employees. In fact, at one point last year, Brookdale Hospital had threatened to stop paying the medical coverage of its employees because they “didn’t have the money for it” and the union flung its hands in the air and let them.
In essence, at every turn when 1199 has had a chance to help someone out, they’ve turned their back on them. I have no reason to think this case will be any different and 240 people will be out of work without someone on their side and without an advocate to tell these morons running the hospital to drop the ridiculous disciplinary charges against someone who essentially said she was confused about her future and wished her fellow laid off employees good luck.
I’m not expecting anything, though. In the end, they’ll just pretend they can’t do anything or ignore it entirely.
(PS: Janet, whose last name I won’t mention either, is a close family friend; Admittedly my aggravation about this story is somewhat personal, but that doesn’t erase is validity)
