SEIU Healthcare launches petition drive urging neutrality in organizing effort at Places for People

BY TIM ROWDEN
Editor-in-Chief

St. Louis – SEIU Healthcare has undertaken an organizing drive at Places for People. The union has launched a petition urging management to take a neutral stance in the organizing effort, including allowing organizers access to the building and establishing a card check process.

Places for People (PFP) is a community behavioral health organization that provides assistance to people with severe mental health issues, who are on the road to recovery after experiencing mental health and substance use disorders.

“They have a lot of workers who are doing critically important work of keeping severely mentally ill folks in a community setting,” Missouri Campaign Coordinator for SEIU Healthcare Laura Barrett told attendees at the Nov. 30 meeting of the Faith Labor Alliance, hosted by Missouri Jobs with Justice.

“There’s about 300 frontline essential workers at Places for People,” Barrett said. “The bad part for us organizers is there’s 100 managers. It’s a little top heavy, and they have come out pretty aggressively against the union drive.”

Workers at PFP have been organizing for about six months and are in the process of collecting union authorization cards from employees.

“It’s really an important drive, one that would break new ground in Missouri by organizing mental health workers,” Barrett said.

POLITICAL SUPPORT
The St. Louis Board of Alderman on Nov. 9 passed a resolution in support of the workers. It reads: “The Board urges Places for People leadership to meet with workers and their chosen representative SEIU Healthcare Missouri to negotiate a fair election process that prevents intimidation and retaliation by either party and creates a legitimate and transparent process by which workers may decide whether to unionize.”

SEIU Healthcare organizes hospital workers and nursing home workers. The link to Places for People is that many people who are severely mentally ill are currently housed in nursing homes.

“Forty percent of people who are in nursing homes in St. Louis City today are folks with a severe mental health diagnosis. The population of nursing homes has just changed drastically,” Barrett said. “Folks are about 10 years younger than they used to be, and this is requiring a very different kind of training and work for nursing home workers. We think it’s really important to support community solutions. That’s why we want to organize Places for People and support the solution that’s really a vital one for our community.”

PETITION DRIVE
The Places for People Worker Organizing Committee has launched a petition drive urging workers and community allies to sign on to a letter to the Places for People board urging them to take a neutral stance in the organizing effort and join organizing workers in the fight against “a broken system.”

“It’s going to be a tough fight,” Barrett said. “The board is coming from a corporate background so it’s important to get as many signatures on the petition as possible.”

You can sign the petition at https://act.seiu.org/a/mo_pfp_db.