In the spring of 2012, an energetic union organizing campaign for some 3,500 hourly workers began at UPMC’s two biggest hospitals in Oakland.
Soon, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania filed the first of 21 complaints against UPMC with the National Labor Relations Board. Nine years later, the organizing campaign continues at UPMC Presbyterian and Shadyside hospitals — with a vote for representation by hospital drivers, aides and cafeteria workers yet to be held.
Here’s what happened:
Weeks of NLRB hearings on the complaints were followed by rulings, then appeals to federal court, then appeals to an appellate court — all of which have effectively left SEIU Healthcare running in place while keeping the union out of UPMC’s two biggest hospitals in Pittsburgh.
Pending federal legislation in the U.S. Senate would erase some of the barriers to such union-organizing efforts nationally, but passage seems unlikely. Meanwhile, contract talks around the country drag on.
Employers spend an estimated $340 million annually for “union avoidance” consultants to discourage organized labor campaigns by improving management techniques and employee relations, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based outfit that advocates for labor.
Only 6.3% of the private-sector workforce was unionized last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or 10.8% for wage and salary workers overall — a steep decline from 1983, when 20.1% of the total workforce belonged to a union.
Fewer petitions for union representation are being filed with the NLRB — 2020 was a nine-year low with 1,440 petitions submitted — and, at 46%, fewer than half the votes for unionization last year were successful.
“Union avoidance is a process and not an event,” Walter Orechwa, CEO of labor relations consultant Projections Inc., of Norcross, Ga., wrote in a blog post.
UPMC and SEIU Healthcare both declined to comment on the organizing drive there, but experts say the Pittsburgh hospital giant’s slow-walk strategy is a classic tool by employers to discourage unionization — and one being used increasingly around the country. At the same time, UPMC managers have been improving communication with employees, which dovetails with new CEO Leslie Davis’ strategy of “managing by walking around” to regularly meet with employees to hear their concerns.
UPMC took the starch out of one SEIU campaign slogan by independently announcing in 2016 starting wages would increase to $15 an hour effective in 2021.
Across town, the delay tactic may be a factor in working out a contract agreement between 650 registered nurses at Allegheny Health Network’s West Penn Hospital in Lawrenceville and SEIU Healthcare, although talks there have only been going on for six months.
“It just seems like a standstill,” said West Penn registered nurse Kayla Rath, a member of the negotiating committee. “We don’t feel like the administration is really listening to nurses.”
Among the stumbling blocks are proposed increases to wages and benefits, she said, which hospital management hasn’t responded to “in months.” Although the COVID-19 pandemic and the clumsiness of labor negotiations using the online meeting tool Zoom have slowed talks, even in nonpandemic times, wages and benefits are typically among the thorniest issues to resolve.
In a July 1 statement, AHN said the 13-hospital system continues “to bargain in good faith with our SEIU-represented employees at West Penn to reach an agreement.”
West Penn nurses voted for SEIU Healthcare representation in August 2020 and voted again in late July to authorize their negotiating committee to issue a strike notice to hospital management if negotiations fail. No date has been set for a walkout, Ms. Rath said.
Nurses at AHN’s Allegheny General, Allegheny Valley and Canonsburg hospitals have been represented by SEIU Healthcare for many years, but Forbes Regional Hospital nurses are not unionized, so whatever happens at West Penn could set the tone for labor relations at corporate parent Highmark Health.
AHN’s four for-profit minihospitals, located around the city, are not unionized.
Slow-walking labor talks is a classic negotiating strategy, said Allyson Belovin, a lawyer who represents workers at the New York-based firm of Levy Ratner.
“Rather than employers being publicly hostile to unions, they are moderating their approach by not being overtly hostile but rather using a slow-roll approach to cut the union’s legs out from under them,” Ms. Belovin said. “We’re seeing a lot of that.”
Employers have a legal duty to bargain in good faith with employee representatives and to sign any collective bargaining agreement that’s reached. But simply going through the motions of negotiating, responding slowly to information requests and the like to draw out the process may not rise to bad-faith bargaining, she said. The penalty for bargaining in bad faith can be just an NLRB order to return to bargaining.
Slow walking is the “main strategy employers use with the NLRB and the courts because delay is so effective,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education and research at Cornell University. This tactic typically adds five years to the negotiating process, she said. “(Unions) have to use other pressure tactics to make the cost of delay greater than the cost of a settlement with the union.”
In addition to the threat of a strike, union pressure tactics typically include getting the support of politicians. In the case of the West Penn talks, SEIU Healthcare has had support from politicians like state Rep. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, and Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Deb Gross, who spoke at a July 1 nurses’ rally in the park outside the hospital.
SEIU Healthcare also endorsed state Rep. Ed Gainey for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Pittsburgh in the spring primary, which he won. “It is time for UPMC and all large healthcare systems to pay workers living wages and pay their fair share,” Mr. Gainey said in a statement following SEIU Healthcare’s endorsement.
Picking up support in the community can increase pressure on management to reach an agreement, Ms. Bronfenbrenner said. “It takes a lot more work, but you have to find out what the employer cares about and put the pressure on there.”
Unions and their advocates have looked at other strategies, as well.
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, passed by the U.S. House in March, would make it easier for unions to organize by allowing mediation and arbitration to settle impasses. Labor leaders, including the late Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said the bill was their single biggest legislative priority in this Congress.
But the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, given the lack of Republican support.
Back at West Penn, bargaining sessions were scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. Ms. Rath stressed the lack of progress despite the cordial tone of the talks.
“Everything is civil,” she said, “but it is frustrating.”
Updated at 11:45 a.m. Monday Aug. 16.
Kris B. Mamula: kmamula@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.
First Published: August 16, 2021, 9:28 a.m.
