GETZVILLE, N.Y. (WKBW) — LaCearne Toni Banks is an environmental service worker at Weinberg Campus in Getzville. She loves the role so much, it's kept her coming back for the past decade.
"When I first came here, it was hard to get in here. You had to wait a while. The waiting list was so long and they vetted you so well," Banks said. "This was a great place."
Banks and 1199 United Healthcare Workers East Organizer Darlene Gates are part of the union and are pushing for new leadership after they said the current one is partially to blame for the current financial situation.
"Not only are they dealing with these uncertainties of pay increases and receiving their paychecks, nor have they received the benefits from the bargaining agreement that we reached," Gates said.
Gates said they reached a bargaining agreement on an 18-month contract this past summer and that workers have yet to see any of those wage and benefit promises. You can watch our story below and read more here.
Banks said she and her colleagues were worried their check would bounce again this week.
"This week, Friday came, and nobody had anything pending in their accounts. People who got paid by debit card or if your money was electronically deposited, nothing," Banks said. "Now, everybody is like, 'Why should we have to work for free?'"
I took their concerns to Chris Koenig, president of Lineage Care Group, an alliance of nursing homes. Weinberg is one of them.
"Yeah, so there's 180 total beds on the operating certificate. So, they have heating and cooling units for each room called PTACs. The difficulty with that is when they go down, they are a couple of thousand dollars to replace. Which means the room is non-operational because they don't have the funds to replace those now," Koenig said. "The idea was then to pull the units that work and consolidate them to specific floors. That way, we have the staff on similar floors, rather than have them run all over the building between multiple floors."
We also talked about how the union wants a transition of power.
"I think what they're referring to is the receivership. So, that's the transition of ownership. Being a nonprofit, there's not actually owners. We have boards. There's multiple boards that we have between Niagara, Wheatfield, Scoffield, Lineage," he said. "What it would do with the receivership is we would tell the state our board of directors is going to take over from the Weinberg Board. We're going to oversee the operations from here. So, leadership would transition with the funds that would come in."
I asked Koenig what happens next and if he anticipates any changes before the end of the year. He said at this point, it's in the hands of state lawmakers.
I reached out to Robert Meyer, President and Chief Executive Officer at Weinberg Campus, for comment and haven't heard back.
