Two employees of the housekeeping and environmental services company contracted to clean Detroit’s Harper University Hospital and Hutzel Women’s Hospital sued Thursday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, alleging they were fired after they spoke out about a lack of cleaning supplies and staffing that led to dirty operating rooms and other unsanitary conditions.
The workers — Denise Bonds, 52, of Detroit, and Shenesia Rhodes, 48, of St. Clair Shores — sued Tenet Healthcare, the for-profit parent company of the Detroit Medical Center, which operates Harper and Hutzel, along with the Compass Group, which owns Crothall Healthcare, and was contracted to provide cleaning services.
Showing pictures of dried blood and bodily fluid they say was crusted on hospital beds and puddles of blood on the floor of a utility room, Rhodes and Bonds said the companies refused to provide adequate cleaning supplies to workers or staff the hospital properly to ensure rooms were thoroughly cleaned — a violation of health and safety rules.
According to court records, Rhodes and Bonds were told they had to use five rags to clean as many as 28 rooms, leading to concerns over cross-contamination. The same rags used to clean toilets in one patient’s room had to be reused in other patients’ rooms.
Operating room suites where babies were delivered by cesarean section were not thoroughly sanitized. Conditions at the hospital got so bad, Rhodes said, workers offered to go to Walmart to buy supplies, but were denied. The women allege they complained in person to supervisors, by phone and by email, but were reprimanded and faced retaliation.
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Ultimately, after Rhodes and Bonds, both union stewards, filed complaints with the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, they were fired.
“We had harassment … every time we spoke up,” Rhodes said. “That’s when we took further actions and went to OSHA … because it wasn’t safe. We had coworkers who didn’t even have a voice because they were afraid of getting fired.
“Housekeepers and janitors and other people like that are afraid. We decided to be their voice because we are union stewards, but we are more than housekeepers. We are bigger than that. We pray with these patients. We have fun with the employees. They became our family … like a second home. … You want it to be clean. You want it to be great. But it’s like they dropped the ball on us.”
Tenet Healthcare declined to comment Thursday on the allegations made in the lawsuit. The Free Press did not get a response Thursday to an email message seeking comment from the Compass Group.
Azzam Elder, the Dearborn-based attorney representing Bonds and Rhodes, said workers were denied cleaning supplies so the companies could cut expenses and boost profits.
He is seeking $44 million for his clients because “the CEOs of both hospitals, they make $22 million a year between the two of them. So we’re going to be asking, because of the damage they’ve caused my clients, for one year’s salary from both of them because justice belongs to even the little people who speak up.”
Rhodes and Bonds said Tenet and Compass/Crothall not only failed to ensure the hospital was adequately cleaned, but the companies also did not provide workers with personal protective equipment to keep them safe from the coronavirus.
Rhodes had coronavirus three times while working at the hospital and was denied an N95 mask.
“Early on during the COVID-19 pandemic, plaintiff Rhodes was given an n95 mask from a physician, but (supervisors) took away her n95 mask and told her that she is not a doctor or nurse, and that housekeepers should not be wearing n95 masks,” the lawsuit alleges.
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Their claims come two years after employees at another Tenet-owned DMC hospital, Detroit’s Sinai-Grace, alleged they were fired for speaking out about unsafe conditions in violation of the Michigan Whistleblowers’ Protection Act.
In documents filed in Wayne County Circuit Court, the workers — four nurses, a clinical coordinator and an emergency room technician — alleged dozens of patients died unnecessarily at Sinai-Grace early in the coronavirus pandemic because the hospital system failed to provide adequate staffing and supplies to properly care for them.
They said the hospital ran out of stretchers, beds, ventilators, monitors to track patients’ vital signs, body bags and oxygen tanks.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Dana Hathaway ruled that the workers had a right to a jury trial, but Tenet’s lawyers appealed that decision.
The state Court of Appeals ordered the case to arbitration, but Jim Rasor, the attorney representing the Sinai-Grace workers, appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court.
The state Supreme Court issued a stay in the case, delaying a decision because Sinai-Grace workers’ complaint is similar to another under consideration, McMillon v. City of Kalamazoo.
“The backdrop of this is that companies have been putting these mandatory arbitration agreements in place to keep people from getting to a jury because they know the juries are going to be very unhappy about how these workers are treated by the companies,” Rasor said. “They’re hoping that arbitration will be less public and they’ll get hit less from a dispassionate arbitrator rather than an actual jury of people’s peers.”
And in December 2020, two former DMC cardiologists won a $10.6 million arbitration award against Tenet Healthcare, including reinstatement of their medical staff privileges at Harper, Hutzel and Sinai-Grace hospitals, after they faced retaliation for raising concerns about substandard care, cost-cutting measures and allegations of improper Medicare and Medicaid billing practices.
The arbitrator found that Dallas-based Tenet acted with malice in fall 2018 when the DMC fired Drs. Mahir Elder and Amir Kaki from their leadership positions, and soon afterward, discontinued their staff privileges.
Dr. Mahir Elder is the brother of Azzam Elder, the attorney representing Bonds and Rhodes.
Rhodes said she has been looking for work, but so far has been unable to find any.
“It’s a traumatizing moment for both of us,” she said.
“I tried to do DoorDash, but the gas prices was not conducive. … I just was like, this might not be for me, burning more gas than I am making. So I’ve been putting in resumes.”
Free Press staff writer JC Reindl contributed to this report.
Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.
