Some UPMC employees, locked in a battle with the Pittsburgh-based health care giant, are planning a strike Nov. 18 to protest working conditions, the right to form a union and demand $20 an hour wages.
More than a dozen employees carrying signs saying "Safer Staffing Now" and "Respect our Rights" gathered in front of UPMC's headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh to announce the strike and to send a message to the health care system. Health care workers around the country, including Kaiser Permanente employees, will be striking at times during next week.
It wasn't clear how many workers would be involved in the strike against the largest health care system and nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania, with 40 hospitals in the commonwealth, western New York and western Maryland. The event was co-organized by SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, which has been battling with UPMC on union representation, salaries and working conditions over the past several years, as well as Hospital Workers Rising.
They are calling for $20/hour minimum wage, health care that is affordable, the elimination of medical debt among employees and union rights.
Speakers included UPMC employees, state Sen. Lindsay Williams, a pastor and a professor from the University of Pittsburgh.
"UMPC has all but admitted to knowing that workers are having trouble making ends meet," said Juilia Centofanti, a pharmacy tech at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. She said it's difficult to have to struggle to pay the bills while UPMC is the largest nongovernmental employer in the state and should be leading by example.
She said a $500 bonus, which was announced for all employees earlier this week, was "a slap in the face to all workers." She said UPMC employees need to be unionized. Only about 3% of all of UPMC employees are unionized.
Williams, who has continually supported SEIU and employees, said the health care system was paying poverty wages that force workers to go to food banks to make ends meet and put off doctors' visits because they can't afford the costs.
"Their job has never been easy. It's always been a challenging job, but over the last two years it has gotten immeasurably and incalculably worse," Williams said. "The amount of stress that is put on these workers ... and UPMC could have recognized that, acknowledged that, given them hazard pay. Instead, we get signs that say 'Health Care Heroes work here' and a pat on the back."
Other UPMC workers, including an employee of UPMC Mercy and another of UPMC Presby, said staff members were overwhelmed and overworked due to the pandemic, and that short staffing is impacting care.
Martin Rafanan, an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America pastor, praised the commitment of the employees and said they put the community's well-being above their own. He looked up at the UPMC headquarters towering above the news conference.
"It represents the power you face. But I'm telling you, you are more powerful," Rafanan said.
Jeffrey Shook, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said the research he's done into wages in Pittsburgh of health care workers shows more than 60% of them being unable to either pay rent or mortgage or utility bills, unable to access care or they fall into medical debt, among other challenges.
"I can tell you with total confidence that everything you're hearing now is extensively documented in the data we've collected," Shook said of the workers' stories. 'We have seen things such as the high number of material and financial hardships these workers face."
While UPMC announced a commitment to a minimum of $15 an hour in 2016, a process that was completed in January 2021 in its large urban core of facilities, the workers and SEIU say it's not enough to make ends meet with inflation. UPMC told the Business Times this week that it was planning to increase those minimum wages to $15.75 an hour.
But the workers and SEIU and other allies are pushing for $20 an hour, they said. Shook agreed saying that $15 to $19 an hour for employees still leads to what he called significant material hardships that also increase stress and lower physical and mental health.
"We're finding that once you get to the $19, $20 an hour, that's when you see substantial reductions in hardships," Shook said.
UPMC didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The health system just this week announced that it would invest more than $300 million into compensation, including the raise in minimum wage and the $500 bonus payable in late November. It will also increase merit pay, provide health savings accounts of $1,000 for lower-wage single employees and $2,000 for employees with families, and freeze health care costs for 2022 in an effort to address issues for lower-wage workers.