Richmond State Hospital: 'The absence of facts'
Source: By Bill Engle, Palladium Item (IN), April 9, 2006
....... The state of Indiana's Family and Social Services Agency plans to privatize the 116-year-old state hospital in Richmond this summer and that prospect has left many of the hospital's 615 employees in a vacuum of worry and wonder. ...... Employees don't know if they will have jobs beyond the 12 months promised in the guidelines for the privatization, or localization as state officials prefer to call it. They don't know what will happen with their health care, their pension, their future. ...... Dennis Rosebrough, FSSA communications director, said the plan is for a local non-profit organization to assume management of the hospital. The hospital will remain in the ownership of the state of Indiana and this local group will take over management. ...... Dave Warrick, executive director of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said around 225 state hospital workers were AFSCME members until Gov. Mitch Daniels decertified the collective bargaining rights for about 25,000 state workers Jan. 1, 2005. Warrick said about 100 state hospital workers have dropped out of AFSCME since then. He says that his union's past history with privatization has "not been good."