ANNA — Dozens of employees of Choate Mental Health Center took to the sidewalks in Anna to picket on Thursday, decrying issues of insufficient staffing at the facility.
Employees claim that understaffing the facility has created unsafe working conditions, forcing them to work multiple shifts and skip breaks to meet demand.
“It should not be the norm that an employee has to work 16 hours out of the day just to make sure that our clients have the needs that they want,” Ona Rivero Winfield, president of the AFSCME Local 141 union, said. “We deserve to be able to go to the bathroom. We deserve fairness on the job.”…