Protesters snarled rush-hour traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge today during a march aimed at saving Long Island College Hospital, the beleaguered Cobble Hill medical center that’s on the brink of closure.
The march, which ended in Foley Square in Manhattan, shut down the crucial traffic artery for 20 minutes around 5 pm.
Ten protesters, including Brooklyn City Councilman Brad Lander, were arrested at the Manhattan base of the bridge.
While there’s a court order barring SUNY Downstate, the hospital’s operators, from laying off employees, LICH told hundreds of workers yesterday not to report to work anymore.
About 650 employees were put on “paid administrative leave,” so they’re technically not layoff victims, according to a hospital spokesman.
The court order also requires LICH to maintain the same level of care, and hospital operators said they’re doing that, even with drastically diminished staff. The court order was sparked by lawsuits, pressed by doctors and nurses unions, aimed at keeping the hospital open.
“We’re doing that to balance out staffing in the building with low patient volume,” said Robert Bellafiore, a spokesman for the hospital’s operator SUNY Downstate.
Employees were caught off guard by the sudden pink slips
“They’re crying. They’re upset because they got laid off!” said 40-year-old Michael Dulski, who has worked in housekeeping for 17 years at the hospital.
“Fight. It’s all we can do right now. It seems like whatever they do, they get away with it. Contempt, contempt, contempt!”
Pink slips also came along with police, brought in by hospital suits to keep the order.
“Around 3:15 we were given pink slips saying our services were no longer needed and they asked us to go until further notice,” said nurse Lisa Cacciola, 46, a 25-year employee at the hospital.
“They had 20 cops, state police outside our locker room making sure we were getting out stuff and out of here.”
Cacciola began to cry, thinking that her career at LICH might be over.
“I’m angry,” she sobbed. “It was everybody. All our colleagues. We didn’t even have time to say good-bye to our colleagues after 25 years working there.”
The hospital’s operator, SUNY Downstate, claims it has to shut it down in the wake of crippling, multi-million-dollar losses each month.
Employees and neighborhood residents fear that patients in the neighborhood will die without their local hospital.
“We were all called into the office and given a letter saying that our services are no longer required at this time. It was very underhanded,” said 50-year-old Trudy Llewelyn, and operating-room tech at the hospital for 17 years.
“I feel devastated, distraught, unhappy and I feel very, very angry.”
Meanwhile, an 81-year-old man suffering from dementia – profiled on WPIX earlier this week as a patient who might suffer from a hospital closure – went missing today at about 3 p.m. when pink slips went flying at the hospital, police sources said.
Celso Heredia was found wandering under the BQE a month ago and had been at LICH ever since. A hospital spokesman declined comment on Heredia.
The Foley Square rally drew mayoral hopefuls Bill DeBlasio and John Liu, who both called for SUNY Downstate to keep LICH going.
“I don’t know when SUNY’s going to get the point that they are breaking a judge’s order that is exceedingly clear,” DeBlasio said. “There’s going to be real consequences. The next proceeding is Monday and I’m convinced that there’s going to be real, personal and individual consequences for SUNY officials who have participated in breaking the law.”
Liu said there has to be a way to keep LICH open.
“It’s the richest city in the country. One of the richest in the world. How can we not have the resources to keep our people healthy, to keep our people safe? To keep our hospitals open?” Liu told protesters.
Additional reporting by David K. Li