A TikTok video that drew 531 comments by Monday morning aired complaints about an unexpected wage cut and other changes to UPMC’s 2-year-old traveling nurse program, the health care giant’s latest flash point with labor as the 40-hospital system confronts a union campaign to derail a planned UPMC acquisition.
UPMC’s travel nurse unit, which fills temporary vacancies at system hospitals with registered nurses and other medical staff, was informed Thursday that the new base pay rate for many of them would be $72 an hour, 15.3% less than the $85 an hour they had been paid, according to a TikTok video posted Saturday by the.nurse.erica, who describes herself as a nurse advocate, and confirmed by a 38-year-old traveling UPMC nurse, who asked not to be identified.
In addition to the pay cut, the pay cycle for travel allowances was also changed and overtime work was eliminated.
“You have the power,” Nurse Erica repeats in the three-minute video, urging nurses affected by the wage cut to consult with a labor lawyer about a possible lawsuit.
The $85-an-hour wage — premium pay — and benefits were outlined in an agreement the traveling nurses signed in accepting the special assignment.
The average wage for a registered nurse in Pittsburgh with a bachelor’s degree is $51.54 an hour, according to Santa Monica, Calif.-based employment marketplace ZipRecruiter.
In a statement Sunday, UPMC said the “health care landscape across the U.S. has continued to dramatically change and there has been a significant shift away from external agency use, including a rapid decrease in contract rates.
“The UPMC travel staffing program is now evolving as others have across the country.”
At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals turned to independent staffing agencies to fill slots, which drove up operating expenses that were later partly offset by one-time federal grants. Forming internal units gave hospitals the best of both worlds — the flexibility of an independent contractor with the oversight of a local health system.
But as the pandemic waned and government funding dried up, hospitals’ demand for traveling nurses softened, according to Premier Healthcare Professionals CEO Chris Eales.
“The rates have come back down, almost to where they were pre-pandemic,” Mr. Eales said. “And the demand is very soft at the moment. Hospitals are struggling to afford temporary staffing.”
Internal nursing units to fill openings throughout a health system were not a common option hospitals chose to address nursing shortages, said Mr. Eales, whose temporary staffing company is based in Cumming, Ga.
Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh, Morgantown-based WVU Medicine and Penn Highlands Healthcare in DuBois, Pa., are other systems that circulate nurses among hospitals as needed, but officials at each institution said Monday that no changes were planned to wages for benefits for their nurses who travel.
The UPMC nurse estimated that 380 of the 650 or so nurses who travel to the farthest hospitals in the system will be affected by the change. UPMC officials encouraged nurses to schedule one-on-one meetings with their managers to discuss the job changes, the nurse said.
UPMC travel nurses, who receive drive-time pay plus a travel allowance of $1,860, fill six-week shifts at hospitals in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York. The unit was formed after a nationwide shortage of nurses grew acute during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“While the money is very attractive, the reality is it’s attractive because you’re making a lot of personal choices about how you work and what you do in your own personal life to adapt to that,” Tami Minnier, senior vice president of UPMC’s health service division, said in 2021 when the unit was formed.
UPMC traveling nurses are not represented by a union.
Meanwhile, the health care giant is fending off an SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania campaign to block the system’s planned acquisition of Washington Health System, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. SEIU has been collecting signatures on petitions opposing the merger, which were to be delivered Friday to the state attorney general’s office in the Strip District.
Joining SEIU in gathering comments on the merger was the Center for Coalfield Justice, a nonprofit advocacy group formed in 1994 to address coal mining and fracking issues. CCJ has expressed caution about the merger.
The attorney general, which conducted a public hearing on the merger Thursday, along with the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing the deal for anticompetitive effects in the region’s health care market. As of March 2023, UPMC said it controlled 43% of the inpatient market for medical-surgical services in the 29 counties of Western Pennsylvania
Relations between UPMC and SEIU soured after years of union efforts to represent hourly workers at UPMC’s flagship Presbyterian Hospital, which the union said management has tried to block.
Also Thursday, the day of the attorney general’s hearing on the WHS deal, a UPMC Hamot Hospital employee filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania alleging anticompetitive practices by the health system that has resulted in suppressed worker wages and increased workloads.
Corrected January 26, 2024 at 1:32 p.m. to reflect the Center for Coalfield Justice’s concern about, rather than opposition to the UPMC-WHS merger.
Kris B. Mamula: kmamula@post-gazette.com
First Published: January 23, 2024, 12:00 a.m.
Updated: January 23, 2024, 7:35 p.m.
