With the famous spooky theme from the Twilight Zone playing in the background, Amsterdam Memorial Hospital housekeeper Mary Apholz called out from a makeshift flatbed stage, “Can you believe it — healthcare workers without health care?”
Mary was part of a group of Capital Region 1199SEIU hospital and nursing home workers who literally took to the streets and roads in the fall with their traveling theater group-on the back of a flat back truck. A car caravan of more than a hundred 1199SEIU workers drove across 3 upstate communities, performing several skits about dedicated health care workers who just can’t afford to get sick.
But, Mary hardly had to “perform.” Playing the role of “Nana” in one of the skits, she was-in real life — recovering from a 10-month battle with cancer of the lymph nodes.
“I didn’t have to act. It was a true story,” Mary says. “Our wages were the lowest in our area. With low wages, high premiums, co-pays, and medicine, I was having a terrible time trying to pay the rent and buy food. I had to choose which medicines I could afford, and then not take the ones I couldn’t.”
Each skit performed by the theater group left the audience wondering what would happen to the dedicated health caregivers who couldn’t afford to take of themselves and their families. But Mary’s personal story has a happy ending.
Her cancer is in remission. And last month, the workers at Amsterdam Memorial ratified a contract that included raises of up to 35 percent, and much improved, affordable health benefits.
“I tell you what got me through,” Mary says. “Hope. That and having my Union sisters and brothers with me, fighting for better wages and benefits, gave me the strength and courage to make it another day — and another day after that. I think that I wouldn’t have made it without that.”