Union organizer beaten
NY hospital workers rally against cops
By Stephen Millies
Queens, N.Y.
Two thousand hospital workers took to the
streets April 29 to protest the police beating of 1199 union
organizer Omar Garcia.
Busload after busload of workers came to Rufus King Park,
across from Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, Queens. That's
where Garcia was beaten on March 25.
Garcia had left a union meeting in the hospital's cafeteria
and was prevented from returning by guards. New York cops were
called and proceeded to viciously attack the union
organizer.
Eyewitness Tara Cordon-Counts told the crowd of how bloody
Garcia was after the police were through hitting and kicking
him.
Cordon-Counts-who is a licensed practical nurse and an 1199
delegate at Mary Immaculate-told Workers World that the cops
went after Garcia "like you chase a turkey-to kill it."
Garcia said he had to have five stitches below the lip and
three inside his mouth.
The upshot was that the victim of this police beating-Omar
Garcia-faces charges of "resisting arrest" and "disorderly
conduct." The hospital did agree to drop charges of "criminal
tresspass"- their excuse to call the city cops in the first
place.
Trying to intimidate organizing drive
Many of the workers who came to this demonstration know Omar
Garcia personally. All were outraged about police
brutality.
They also knew why Omar Garcia was beaten: to prevent 1199
from organizing the physician's assistants at Mary Immaculate
Hospital.
P.A.s are employees who work under the supervision of a
doctor. With two to four years of schooling, these workers are
better paid than those in the hospital's housekeeping
department. Or those who have to get up at 3 and 4 a.m. to work
in the kitchen.
But P.A.s are workers who need and want union rights as
well. Omar Garcia was leading this drive at Mary Immaculate. In
spite of the police attack on Garcia, the P.A. voted 54-17 to
be represented by 1199.
Workers from at least a dozen hospitals and nursing homes
attended this protest. Large contingents came from both the
huge Columbia Presbyterian complex in Washington
Heights-northern Manhattan-and the closer Flushing
Hospital.
Garcia told the workers' rally that it was "the opening
salvo" in contract negotiations between 1199 and the hospitals,
expected to start within two months.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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