When St. Vincent’s Hospital, a private institution in Manhattan closed its doors amid a citywide uproar in April 2010, medical technician Grace Fuller thought she and other qualified employees would quickly find new jobs. The hospital, founded by the Sisters of Charity, was the last Roman Catholic general hospital in New York City and was known for its service to the poor and uninsured.
The hospital was important to the city’s residents. It was a major supplier of health care to the homeless and poor, who came from across the city to seek treatment, according to an administrator in one of the many reports written about the hospital’s closure in the New York Times. In the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, the hospital also played a major role in providing medical assistance to those affected.
Fuller, who lives in Greenpoint, had been at the hospital for 20 years administering tests using specific technical equipment known as an electrocardiograph and Holter. “We were told that we would be placed into other hospitals, but there just weren’t enough placements for everybody,” Fuller said.
More ominously, she said, the available jobs themselves had changed in ways that no longer fit her long-acquired technical skills. At St. Vincent’s Fuller was responsible only for her specific job running two kinds of tests. Searching for a new job, however, she discovered that one individual must be equipped to do multiple jobs.
“They were combining our jobs with nurses aides,” she said.
She recalls a job fair at which she learned that the job she had done, working the EKG and Holter machines, now required a license. Moreover, hospitals were seeking practitioners able to perform other technical jobs such as drawing blood.
“After working for 20 years, I don’t think I should start again,” Fuller said. She said she would lose the seniority status she had acquired after devoting 20 years of her life to her job.
She also lacks computers skills and was not familiar with other technological advances that took place in the last 20 years. Nor does she have a college degree, having entered the job market immediately upon graduating from high school.
One option is to enter a training program at hospitals offering jobs that do not require a college degree. Her union also offered retraining when the hospital closed, but at 55 years old she doesn’t want to go through training.
Fuller has been unemployed now for almost two years, and it is unclear when or how she will rejoin the workforce. She said she considers herself better off than most unemployed people she knows. She receives the maximum for unemployment from the state, which is $405 per week, but that will run out at the end of the year. Her four sons, in their mid-to-late 20s and 30s, all have steady job and provide additional assurance. She is convinced her sons would provide assistance if her situation became dire.
It is just Fuller and her husband in the household, and she manages. “I don’t splurge on buying things. I just buy what we need,” Fuller said. Her husband retired from his job as an emergency medical technician in the Fire Department in October, and the couple is waiting to receive his pension by the end of November.
Rent is not a problem since she and her two sisters share ownership of a three-family brownstone, which they inherited from their parents.
She is still bitter about the closing of St. Vincent’s. “We were really angry when we were laid off. Because we really thought somebody would come in and save the hospital,” Fuller said. “I think the problem was that [the other hospitals] weren’t willing to pay me what I was being paid in St. Vincent’s. My salary was higher than that of the newer set of people coming in.”
Fuller was getting paid about $20 an hour, she said, while the newer people were getting around $13-14 an hour. According to Fuller, it was natural for them to hire somebody for less money.
“We were told that the money was gone. But we were never told what happened to it. When did it disappear?” she said. “They were installing flat-screen TV’s by the elevators and we wondered where in the world did those come from if they had no money! They were always doing ‘renovations’ but they kept telling us that they didn’t have money.”
She is also angry with her union, 1199. She recalls the union doing nothing about the entire situation. “In fact, some of the [union] people started looking into other hospitals [for jobs] themselves months in advance. By word of mouth if they heard of jobs opening in other hospitals, they would transfer all of a sudden to these hospitals”, said Fuller.
By the time the hospital closed down, there really weren’t any jobs available, Fuller recalled. But that is what the situation looked like to her. What actually happened will remain an inside story.
“The union was willing to train me but I didn’t want to do those jobs. They wanted me to do patient care. And at my age, I wasn’t going to hurt myself doing that. I’ve seen what some of the women I know had to do. And with my knees and back, its ridiculous,” said Fuller.
“I loved my hospital. I was in a job I loved to do. I was doing it for many years and I was good at it. I didn’t have any problems. I felt betrayed”, she said. “It was made to sound so hopeful that some other hospital would take us over and St. Vincent’s would never close. But they just gave me a pink slip and told me I could clear out my locker today or come do it the next day. That was it.”
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