Hundreds of Howard Brown Health workers went on strike Tuesday amid layoffs at the health center, which specializes in treating LGBTQ patients throughout the city.
The workers who walked off the job Tuesday plan to strike through Thursday. The Illinois Nurses Association represents 440 non-nurse workers at Howard Brown, who decided as a unit to go on strike. At least 170 picketed on Tuesday, though the union didn’t know exactly how many others stayed home and how many crossed the picket line. The workers scheduled to strike included therapists, greeters and coordinators, among others.
Howard Brown is a federally qualified health center, meaning it receives federal dollars to help patients with low incomes. It has 11 clinics on the North, South and West sides of the city.
Howard Brown plans to remain open throughout the strike. In recent days, Howard Brown called patients with appointments slated to occur during the strike to tell them about the situation, and a number of patients chose to reschedule, Howard Brown spokesperson Wren O’Kelley said. A note on the center’s website says patients may experience delays.
The union announced the strike in late December after Howard Brown leaders said they were facing a $12 million shortfall and offered buyouts to workers. The union rejected that buyout proposal, and is also accusing Howard Brown of failing to negotiate a contract in good faith and other violations of the National Labor Relations Act.
Howard Brown said in a statement Tuesday it is “confident that no labor laws were violated.”
Howard Brown said in a news release Monday that it was cutting 16% of its workforce, including by laying off 64 people, giving buyouts to 15 nonunion workers, and closing 38 union and nonunion vacant positions.
Howard Brown said it also planned to reduce spending and cut leaders’ pay. The health center says the $12 million shortfall is due to changes to the federal 340B program, which requires many drugmakers to offer some medications at discounted prices to health care organizations that care for low-income and uninsured people. An end to federal COVID-19 relief funding has also led to the revenue gap, Howard Brown said.
The $12 million is what Howard Brown had projected it would lose by the end of this fiscal year, in the summer, if it did not make the changes, O’Kelley said.
“After looking at every option for cost-saving measures, many which we have already started to implement, we are now taking difficult but necessary actions to reduce expenses with a reduction in workforce. The goal is to minimize the impact on our employees and maintain the high-quality services that our patients expect and deserve,” said David Ernesto Munar, president and CEO of Howard Brown, in the news release. “While painful in the short-term, these cost-saving measures will help ensure Howard Brown’s ability to serve our communities for decades to come.”
Sarah Hurd, an organizer with the Illinois Nurses Association, said the union was already concerned about short staffing at the health care center before the layoffs. She said the reductions now mean an end to the center’s queer family planning program and dramatic cuts to a team that helps survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault through the legal and health care systems.
Mera Flores was part of that team, and among those who were laid off.
Now, she worries about what will become of the people her team normally helps, most of whom are queer, transgender or nonbinary. Flores did everything from accompanying survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault to court, to helping them get medical exams, to helping them find housing if they had to leave a dangerous situation. Flores is also part of the union’s bargaining committee.
“I think this is an abhorrent thing to do to the community,” Flores said as she picketed in the rain Tuesday. “These are life-saving services.”
Cynthia McDonald is also concerned for her patients now that she’s been laid off. She was a case manager working mostly with cisgender women, transgender women and young people living with HIV. She helped make sure those patients could afford their medications and had access to behavioral health services and housing, among other things, if needed. McDonald had a caseload of 34 patients and she’d built a rapport with many of them, she said.
“Our team was already small and understaffed,” McDonald said. “Now, the remaining people on my team have to absorb my caseload. Somebody’s going to fall through the cracks.”
