The Percy Program

It is a fight to level the playing field to be able to compete for jobs and careers on the basis of skills and make available apprentice training to all. In 1973 Al Percy launched a class action lawsuit to give workers like him a chance to better their lot in life. It would also ensure the availability of skilled workers to build the infrastructure of the future.

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3 years ago

Percy vs Cuomo EDNY 21-cv-01421 Complaint

  • Text
  • Skilled
  • Defendants
  • Workers
  • Employers
  • Agencies
  • Compensation
  • Oriska
  • Apprenticeship
  • Employment
  • Percy
Private Attorney General Action

Case

Case 1:21-cv-01421 Document 1 Filed 03/17/21 Page 16 of 154 PageID #: 272 short of panic and chaos caused by the Owner Operator Defendants and the State Officer Defendants. 8. This is institutionalized wrongful treatment of the Class Plaintiff by selfish pursuit of personal interests of the Owner Operator Defendants, Party-in-Interest Defendants, aided and abetted by State Officer Defendants, named herein, diverting, converting and embezzling benefits funds of the Class Plaintiff, despite the consequences to the Class and the patients in facilities run by the Owner Operator Defendants. 9. Behind the sickness and death nightmare resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic infections, is illicit cooperation between the State Governor’s Office, the Government Agencies answering to the Governor’s Office, Owner Operators of nursing home businesses, Parties-in-Interest involved in prohibited transactions under the ERISA, all in concert in a conspiracy to deny the benefits to which the employees, members Class Plaintiff, are rightfully entitled. Lack of preparation, lack of skills, lack of practice and lack of benefit compensation to the Class members, is the reason why employees, vulnerable patients that the care for, and the public, were excessively exposed to infection. 10. This is institutionalized wrongful treatment of the Class Plaintiff by selfish pursuit of personal interests of the Owner Operator Defendants, Party-in-Interest Defendants, aided and abetted by State Officer Defendants, named herein, diverting, converting and embezzling benefits funds of the Class Plaintiff, despite the consequences to the Class and the patients in facilities run by the Owner Operator Defendants. They may have gotten away with it but for a highly contagious virus ripping the cover off their scheme. 11. It is not credible for the Owner Operator Defendants and State Officer Defendants to be surprised by the current pandemic. After the Ebola crisis in 2014, dire concerns over deadly communicable disease threats to New York prompted staff drills that revealed gaps in the then deficient pandemic preparedness, foreshadowed the panic when the COVID-19 infection spread. In 2014 mock patients portrayed by actors at dozens of emergency rooms across New York City arrived reporting symptoms that should have triggered immediate infection-control measures, such as masking and isolating the patient, but it did not. Stress tests show that about 40% failed at least one drill and it took nearly an hour for some patients to be masked and isolated. There was training and drilling needed. 12. Instead of training, drilling and educating so that proper responses become second nature, the funding of Plan assets to provide benefits, including training and continuing education, were diverted by the persons named here as Owner Operator Defendants, Party-in-Interest Defendants, aided and abetted by State Officer Defendants. 13. You will learn that Plan asset benefit funds to cover benefits including training, education, and apprenticeship, were diverted from benefiting the employee Class Plaintiff, diverted 16

Case 1:21-cv-01421 Document 1 Filed 03/17/21 Page 17 of 154 PageID #: 273 instead to prohibited transactions under ERISA, used not for benefits to participants and beneficiaries, nor to cover Plan expenses, but instead to buy real estate, make personal private investments, and generally abscond with the Plan assets. By the wrongful acts of the Owner Operator Defendants in concert with Party-in-Interest Defendants, aided and abetted by State Officer Defendants, failure to train using benefit funds expensed and reported to the State, was the direct and proximate cause of the employee Class members being unprepared for naturally occurring and reoccurring infectious diseases. 14. Selfish diversion and conversion of Plan assets is the cause leading to unpreparedness and is directly responsible for the panic that occurred in March 2020 when the Covid 19 virus rapidly spread. Workers did not have emergency processes that should have been drilled and drilled and drilled and practiced and practiced and practiced, to address such expected communicable disease natural disasters. ERISA benefits under the Plan were and are intended to develop skills which include containing spread and providing treatment of infected persons, but the Plan assets were lost to embezzlement. 15. This complaint shows a pattern of conduct with the complicity of Government Agencies and their State Officers in consort with the Owner Operator Defendants and Party-in- Interest Defendants, that warrants judicial intervention to temper the heavy hand that has led to the unpreparedness of private for-profit businesses that the Government Agencies regulate. You will see the misuse of the authority vested in our Government Agencies, misuse under color of law for the benefit of cohorts who have politically and financially endorsed and supported certain State Officers in authority. 16. Then on March 25, 2020, an order issued by the State's Department of Health (“DOH”) under the emergency authority given by the State Legislature to the Governor, mandating that nursing homes shall not deny readmission or admission to people "solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19." To make matters worse, tests to determine if the readmission persons were still contagious were not allowed by the Order . So fair a day was March 25, 2020 turned foul. 17. When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, it was as though all front-line workers lacked common sense, but in fact what they lacked was organized training and continuing education to make their responses in the face of natural spread of diseases to be second nature learned from drills and practice in preparation for expected communicable diseases that naturally occur and reoccur throughout time. Drilling should have occurred during intervals of no infection when there is time to learn skills that become second nature when infectious assault happens. That did not occur, you will learn here why. 18. The complacency, bureaucracy and actual conspiracy under color of law by the State Officers was an underlying cause of the current disaster, the spread of a communicable disease caused by unpreparedness by failing to regulate the employers (referred to here 17

Alternative Employment Practice Percy Program