About 650 nurses and other staff at Long Island College Hospital were told Wednesday they no longer need to come to work, even as several hundred employees and other supporters took to the Brooklyn Bridge to draw attention to the hospital’s impending closure.
The employees will continue to receive full pay and benefits, but they are no longer required to report to work because the hospital has far more staff than needed to care for a dwindling number of patients, according to Robert Bellafiore, a spokesman for the SUNY Downstate, which owns the hospital. As of Wednesday, LICH has a dozen patients being attended to by 41 nurses, Mr. Bellafiore said.
SUNY has been trying to close the hospital since February, but has formally moved toward closure in the last week, though unions have fought them vigorously in court. A Brooklyn judge said Monday that SUNY has to maintain the same level of services it was offering as of Friday.
In the meantime, unions and other supporters have stepped up efforts to prevent the hospital from closing.
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They began a slow mock funeral march across the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side late Wednesday afternoon. They were accompanied by a hearse and dozens of private cars with protest signs, flags and banners, which moved slowly and periodically stopped on the bridge.
In Manhattan, a group of 10 protesters, including Council Member Brad Lander, were led off in handcuffs after only five minutes late Wednesday afternoon, after they had blocked the vehicle entrance to the Brooklyn-bound side. They were placed in two New York Police Department buses.
“We want to make it clear to SUNY, they’ve got to stop breaking the law,” Mr. Lander said.
A group of nurses and administrative staff from LICH arrived with the letters they received placing them on administrative leave.
Marie Jean-Jacques, 55 years old, ripped open the envelope she was handed earlier. The ambulatory nurse said she hadn’t bothered to open it yet “because we read one and one was enough.”
“After 30 years, this is the thank you you get?” said Jean-Jacques, who lives in Crown Heights. “They haven’t been playing fair. Anything they do at this point, I’m not going to be surprised about it. I don’t believe in taking anything lying down — you have to fight.”
Ms. Jean-Jacques called her letter “a wake up call for everyone.”
Lisa Cacciola, 45, worked at LICH for 25 years. The Carroll Gardens receptionist said she was ushered out by security guards with guns, making her feel “like we’re criminals.”
“I’m angry,” she said. “I don’t care about finding another job, but the way they did it, and I live in the community, I think it’s disgusting what they did.”
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, a Democratic mayoral candidate, who was arrested recently in another protest, said the civil disobedience has created greater urgency around the hospital’s potential closure.
“People realize there’s a fight that can be won here. Sometimes you have to be very vivid in your efforts to protect what people need and it’s going to keep happening,” Mr. de Blasio.
Date: July 24, 2013