At a press conference Monday, held outside Blue Circle’s corporate headquarters in Clayton, spokespeople for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) union representing Blue Circle workers said 70% of the facility’s staff of “about 20 people” is on strike.
Reports out of the nursing homes in the past few months have been graphic: residents left to sit in their own urine and feces, at-risk individuals allowed to wander without supervision, and residents allowed to wait hours before being given the assistance they needed to get out of bed.
Union officials called upon St. Louis City and County to investigate the facilities owned by Blue Circle’s management group, which include Blue Circle, Chestnut Rehab and Nursing, and Big Bend Woods Healthcare Center. They are all owned, at least in part, by Mendel Brecher, Chana Lichtman, and Jacob Zimmerman.
Brecher, Lichtman, and Zimmerman own shares of nine nursing homes across Missouri, Georgia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, including these three in the St. Louis Region. At their three regional nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have found 375 deficiencies, including 26 infection control deficiencies, which are of particular importance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Workers and federal regulators agree the facilities, which provide 402 beds between the three centers, are understaffed.
A 146-page inspection report from last month details numerous failures at Blue Circle. A resident was left sitting in their own waste for hours. Others have developed bedsores, and had catheters attached improperly, increasing infection risk. Staff reported they rarely have time to bathe the residents in their care. A resident who was at risk of choking and required a feeding tube was able to sneak food from vending machines.
Worker Lemarr Young has been with Blue Circle for 20 years—not for the pay, he said, but because workers and patients are like family. A floor manager, he’s one of the workers who walked out Friday.
“There needs to be a full redirect,” he said. “Them people in there, they’re our family. We’re human. We care for our residents, but when we constantly have turnovers, it don’t work.”
Family members of Blue Circle residents have “heaped praise on Lemarr and his coworkers” for striking, according to Lenny Jones, state director for SEIU healthcare in Missouri and Kansas.
“They’re encouraging them to keep going because they see many of the same problems…they have stories of what the understaffing has done to their family members,” he said.
Workers at Blue Circle have been unionized through SEIU Healthcare for over a decade. Still, they have yet to finalize their first contract with Blue Circle Holdings, LLC since negotiations began over a year ago.
The union has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging ownership has bargained in bad faith and made coercive statements — for example, asking a single union member what it would take to stop the strike rather than going to the union itself. At Monday’s press conference, Jones announced the board would be ruling in their favor.
During negotiations, ownership has refused to meet with workers in person or even video call on Zoom, resorting to only phone calls.
“If they were serious about bargaining, they could have flown down and sat at the table with us instead of being on the phone in New York,” Lenny Jones said.
He said many of the facilities’ problems stem from their reliance on temporary agency workers rather than unionized staff. The agency workers move from facility to facility, making more than union workers.
“They come in temporarily, they don’t have relationships with the staff, they don’t have relationships with the workers,” he said.
That understaffing leads to stories he said like “residents being left in the dining room for a long time, soiling themselves, unable to move.”
Along with higher wages, officials want regular meetings between labor and management about worker safety. They believe it could help with the facility's low rate of COVID-19 vaccinations among staff. Only 55% of Blue Circle's healthcare personnel are vaccinated. At Chestnut and Big Bend Woods, those rates are below 30%.
“We’re able to talk with the owners about…this is what it’s going to take to help make workers comfortable with getting vaccinated, like…additional paid time off in case someone gets sick after getting vaccinated, having vaccine stewards help convince those who are holding out on getting vaccinated, to let them know the safety of it,” Jones said.
Blue Circle held one vaccination clinic, Jones said, and after there was low staff turnout for that clinic, made no further effort towards staff education on vaccines.
Alongside better worker safety practices from management, the union is pushing for the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County to establish worker safety offices, where workers in places like Blue Circle could directly report their management complaints. In the county, Lenny Jones said, Councilwoman Shalonda Webb has been a major supporter.
In the city, Mayor Tishaura Jones has been moving towards creating such an office and has attended a recent strike to support SEIU workers in person.
"We're really looking forward to the things our government officials can do to hold ownership groups like Blue Circle accountable,” Lenny Jones said.