SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and the "Strategic Organizing Center" have filed an antitrust complaint against UPMC.
In the 55-page complaint, they claim UPMC has created an anti-competitive tsunami, urging the Department of Justice to investigate the healthcare giant.
SEIU president Matt Yarnell spoke during a news conference Thursday:
“We alleged UPMC acted anti-competitively, by suppressing worker wages and increasing their workloads and then locked workers into these substandard working conditions,” said Yarnell. “First with restrictions that keep workers from leaving their jobs and then by suppressing and interfering with workers attempts to improve their working conditions and form a union.”
Local Rep. Summer Lee was also part of the news conference.
They also say the healthcare giant illegally retaliated against workers who speak out for better conditions.
“Nowhere has UPMC exercised its dominance more aggressively than in labor markets, where UPMC’s monopsony power has enabled UPMC to suppress workers’ wages and benefits, drastically increase their workloads, and prevent workers from exiting or improving these working conditions through a draconian system of mobility restrictions and widespread labor law violations that lock-in sub-competitive pay and working conditions,” the complaint alleges.
UPMC has issued a statement in response to the suit, saying they are increasing the minimum starting wage to $18-per-hour for our non-union workforce by 2025.
That the current average wage is $78,000.
And UPMC, says they also provide college tuition assistance, paid parental leave and backup/emergency daycare for workers.