PORT JERVIS – More than 50 staffers at Bon Secours Community Hospital in Port Jervis picketed in front of the facility on Tuesday to protest what they claim are diminishing services at medical centers operated by the Westchester Medical Center (WMC) Health Network.
Protests were also held at St. Anthony Community Hospital in Warwick and Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern. At Bon Secours, boisterous members of 1199SEIU, stood on bustling Main Street, breaking out in chants such as “Hey, ho. The CEO has to go” and “Union Power.”
“They put signs out to celebrate the 100th year of Bon Secours and I want us to be around for another 100 years,” said Linda O’Connor, a Registered Nurse (RN) at Bon Secours. “We started to gather at this picket for the recent layoffs that we have across our charity system. We also have concerns with what WMC is doing with our community hospitals. Patients are being shipped out and brought to Westchester for services that we can do here.”
O’Connor said everyone who works at Bon Secours is a member of the hospital family. “Many of the employees here live in this community, were raised in this community, they have family in this community, so we are a family here and we look out for each other,” she said.
According to 1199SEIU leadership, WMC’s administration is taking away services from St. Anthony, Bon Secours and Good Samaritan to move them to the main WMC campus. Union reps maintain that while hospitals in places such as New York City are recruiting and retaining staff, WMC is laying off staff and reducing services.
WMC spokesperson Andrew LaGuardia disagreed with the accusations made by 1199SEIU.
“The Bon Secours Charity Health System, which includes Good Samaritan Hospital, St. Anthony Community Hospital, and Bon Secours Community Hospital, recently made the difficult decision to reduce a mix of 50 union and non-union positions,” LaGuardia said. “This decision followed a comprehensive review of operations, staffing, and services to align resources in a manner that best supports our community’s needs. Importantly, patient care services are unaffected, and no services were closed due to this decision.”
LaGuardia added: “We are committed to helping affected workforce members by identifying other open positions within our WMCHealth Network and offering complementary outplacement services for workforce members who need it.”
LaGuardia noted that WMC Health recently completed a $40 million expansion and enhancement in Bon Secours.
