Nursing home workers picketed outside Autumn View Health Care Facility on Thursday, chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, these greedy bosses got to go" and "We work, we sweat, put real money in our checks" as cars whizzed by on Southwestern Boulevard in Hamburg.

It was one of four McGuire Group nursing homes where union members held informational pickets Thursday. At each site, union members sought to raise awareness surrounding what they called understaffing and low wages, two of the primary issues in ongoing negotiations with McGuire for new labor contracts covering about 540 workers across the four nursing homes.

It all comes at a particularly active time in health care labor negotiations in Western New York. The McGuire Group facilities are four of 12 for-profit nursing homes in the area where labor contracts – covering more than 1,200 employees – have expired, with the workers' union, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, in the midst of coordinated job actions across those facilities such as holding one-day strike votes. On Wednesday, caregivers held a similar picket at Fiddler's Green Manor in Springville.

Negotiations also are ongoing at other Western New York health care facilities, none larger than 1199SEIU and the Communications Workers of America Local 1168 bargaining with Kaleida Health on behalf of 6,300 employees. But nursing homes, which saw staffing become further depleted during the pandemic, have been a constant source of labor unrest for many months.

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