Dozens of staff members at Crystal Run Healthcare in Newburgh gathered on Friday, November 21st outside the building for a candlelight vigil and protest for their first contract as part of 1199SEIU.

 

Currently the union is engaged in negotiations with Optum to create the employee’s first contract since joining the union. Optum is a health insurance company and subsidiary of United Health Group, which is the largest healthcare company in the world. Optum gained ownership of Crystal Run Healthcare in 2023. In February of 2025, amid pushback from Optum, employees at Crystal Run voted to join healthcare worker’s union 1199SEIU. 

 

Crystal Run did not respond to a request for comment from the Mid Hudson Times.

 

According to workers at the rally, negotiations haven’t been going well. Crystal Run employee Grace Rhodes said that Optum was “tearing apart our proposals”. said “We’ve had 3 sessions, and just yesterday they sent us a layoff notice.”

 

The main terms that workers were demanding were higher wages, affordable health insurance, and a pension plan. Terri Blancato-Horton, a radiology technician at Crystal Run said “About 50-60 percent of our healthcare workers here can’t afford heath insurance, they have Medicaid…Our employees are having to make decisions about their health care based on financial reasons, which shouldn’t happen when you are a healthcare worker.”

 

One protester, who works at a Crystal Run in Middletown, said that in order to support her two kids “I have two jobs and I Doordash on the side.” 1199SEIU Vice President Angela Lane says some workers at Crystal Run make $17.63 an hour and that “In order to live in Orange, Sullivan, Dutchess, you have to make at least 25 and some change. And that’s paycheck to paycheck.”

 

Workers at the rally also cited low staffing levels as cause for concern. Lisa, a patient services representative claimed that “In my building alone every day except for Fridays, where we have 900 patients for the day, we have over 1200, sometimes in excess of close to 1400 a day. We have anywhere from 20 to 16 PSRs to check in everybody.” And she said that because the pay offered by Optum isn’t competitive, they aren’t able to hire new people. She said “Instead they compress jobs. Like in the radiology suite, not only do the PSRs there schedule for the entire practice, which means CareMount as well on the other side of the bridge, but they also have to check insurances, the whole bit. So they take two jobs and mold them into one, and there is no increase in pay.”

 

Several elected officials spoke at the vigil in support of the union, including New York State Senator James Skoufis. Skoufis addressed the crowd, saying “This vigil I think communicates two simple messages. One is that people who deliver care may not be cared for themselves, and also when management shows up at the table and falls short, it’s not just added stress for our workers, it also weakens the fabric of our entire healthcare system.” State Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson also spoke, talking about three bills he introduced which would prohibit insurance companies from owning healthcare providers and vice versa.

 

This vigil was one of several organized by 1199SEIU all over the Hudson Valley over the past few months. On October 28th healthcare workers at three Summit Health locations in Westchester County held a similar vigil, and Lane said that the union is planning another in Rock Hill in Sullivan County.

 

If the workers don’t get a fair contract, Lane says 1199SEIU is prepared to build up to a strike. She said “It’ll shut down the Hudson Valley.”