Rift over UPMC hospital plan divides union, mayor
Deep down, Lisa Sayre, a nurse entrenched in the yearslong effort to pressure UPMC to recognize a health care workers union, wasn’t expecting much from the public hearing in April.
So Ms. Sayre — one of about two dozen people who spoke at a Pittsburgh Planning Commission meeting that day about a new hospital the health care giant planned in Uptown — used her allotted three minutes to argue that UPMC’s project should come with wage increases. Then she left the meeting.
“I got a text later in the night saying, ‘You’re not gonna believe what happened.’”
What had happened was the six-member commission ordered — as a condition of approving the new UPMC Vision and Rehabilitation Hospital — a community benefits agreement “or similar mechanism toward community partnership.”
Four months later, the hope inspired among the labor groups by that vote has turned sour, and critics of UPMC’s proposal are fuming.
The community benefits agreement envisioned by labor groups like SEIU Healthcare PA and Pittsburgh United never came together. What’s more, the city’s deal with UPMC has led to an unusually nasty spat between those groups and a once loyal ally: Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto.
Venting his frustration earlier this month, Mr. Peduto told reporters that SEIU Healthcare PA was “holding a hospital hostage” with its protests, which he said were “not a way to get something done.”
In a more recent interview with the Post-Gazette, Mr. Peduto defended his statements.
“On this issue, we differ completely,” he said. “After six years of a combative strategy, it’s time to re-strategize how to build the opportunity for a union within UPMC’s lower-paid workers.”
The rift over UPMC’s development comes at a pivotal moment in Pittsburgh’s economy, which is roaring ahead on health care, education and technology. UPMC declined to comment beyond a statement that it “pays above market wages and provides a comprehensive benefits package.”
Mr. Peduto, like other elected officials, treads a difficult line. His open embrace of development— citing job creation and the international prestige it brings to the city — has also brought charges of gentrification and inattention to helping poorer neighborhoods share the benefits.
A protracted battle
In November, UPMC unveiled a $2 billion investment to build three new specialty hospitals in Pittsburgh in a carefully staged, live-streamed event from its Shadyside hospital.
After UPMC displayed a PowerPoint presentation about the three proposed hospitals, Mr. Peduto strode to the podium. He waxed poetic with the familiar story of Pittsburgh’s gritty resilience during the dark times of steel’s collapse and its evolution to a new economy.
It’s a theme the mayor frequently touches on — except this time, he said, in no unclear terms, that UPMC had officially marked the end of that painful transition.
“Pittsburgh has finally gotten there, after those decades of suffering, after those decades of wondering whether or not this city would ever come back,” Mr. Peduto declared.
“The legacy we stand upon of being built by factories along the rivers that produced heavy materials — it never went away,” he added. “It just moved up the hill. And they’re called Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, UPMC.”
For the past several years, UPMC — a rapidly expanding nonprofit that reported net income of nearly $1 billion in 2017 and recently became Pennsylvania’s largest employer with 80,000 people on the payroll — has been the prime target for SEIU and other advocacy groups fighting what they see as unchecked growth.
About six years ago, the SEIU began pressing for UPMC to raise wages to $15 an hour and to recognize a health care workers union. The pressure often took the form of public rallies outside hospitals and temporary strikes — in many cases flanked by elected officials.
Fights spilled before the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency tasked with settling disputes and certifying new unions.
The SEIU has seized opportunities to claim progress.
In 2016, UPMC said it would gradually raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021 — a decision that SEIU notched as a victory but that UPMC said was an internal decision to maintain its competitiveness. At that time, UPMC’s average starting salary in the city was $11.73 an hour. Today, the starting wage is about $13 an hour.
Earlier this month, the NLRB unanimously ruled that UPMC had broken federal labor law by banning off-duty workers from discussing unionization in recent years.
“The conversations [around UPMC] aren’t always easy or straightforward,” said Matt Yarnell, president of SEIU Healthcare PA, in an interview this month. “Our position is when you’re the largest employer in the state, you can do a whole lot of things that can intimidate and squash workers’ ability to have any say.”
Everyone at the table
The new vision hospital at UPMC Mercy required an amendment to UPMC’s institutional master plan, subject to approval by the Pittsburgh planning commission and city council. The SEIU and Pittsburgh United began to organize a wish list after the planning commission stipulated more community engagement as a condition of approval.
Community benefits agreements are signed pacts — usually involving developers, neighborhood groups and local officials — that spell out pledges and investments to be made alongside a major development. Pittsburgh’s first community benefits agreement — approved in 2008 between Hill District community groups and the Pittsburgh Penguins — was considered a landmark achievement.
In the UPMC case, more than 100 people showed up to speak at a city council hearing in July, pushing issues ranging from union rights, pay and affordable housing to access to UPMC hospitals for consumers covered by insurance from its Pittsburgh rival Highmark.
Public comments piled up, including from the controllers for Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh, who encouraged wage commitments tobe part of any agreement.
A city law requires UPMC’s new hospital to pay prevailing wages — calculated as the average wage paid to workers in the same occupation in that region — but Controller Michael Lamb wanted UPMC to raise them across its dozens of existing hospitals.
“UPMC should just make the prevailing wage their wage across their entire system,” said Mr. Lamb, explaining his points in an interview, adding that he doubted that every UPMC position, even with the $15-anhour minimum wage by 2021, would meet that standard.
A different direction
Mr. Peduto said he was already going in another direction.
The mayor said he told SEIU Healthcare PA early on he would not support the union’s positions in the UPMC institutional master plan amendment.
The plans “are about land use,” said Mr. Peduto, adding hehas been involved in about 20 institutional master plans. many of them at universities and hospitals. “They’re not about tangential issues that third parties may want to try toattach to them.”
Earlier this month, Dan Lavelle, a city councilman representing Uptown, released the details of his deal with UPMC. It lists 16 bullet points that include a new addiction medicine clinic, local hiring initiatives beginning this fall and promises to work with “as many minority community service providers as possible.”
It included no wage or union commitments and no specific dollar amounts or timelines.
Mr. Lavelle acknowledged it was not a true community benefits agreement but said the legislative process wasn’t the right venue. He defended the conditions he negotiated and said he was open to a larger CBA.
“The ramifications are actually the same as a CBA” he said. “If they don’t live up to the agreement, we could take them to court.”
Staying the course
In recent weeks, union supporters took to Twitter and released blistering statements that UPMC and the city had secretly negotiated a toothless agreement.
“Unfortunately, it’s standard in terms of the city’s playbook of essentially allowing UPMC to continually dangle a carrot, and the elected leadership gobbles up any crumbs and looks the other way with the larger issues,” said Chelsa Wagner, Allegheny County controller who joined SEIU Healthcare PA in pushing for community outreach.
Union officials said they weren’t heeding the mayor’s advice to regroup.
“I’m not entirely sure what the mayor is talking about,” Mr. Yarnell said. “We’re going to stay the course. This project might be done; there will be more in the future.”
Nila Payton, a worker at UPMCPresbyterian, blamed Mr. Peduto for “going back on his word” and “selling us out.”
She believes a CBA would have helped address wage and development issues that affect Uptown.
“Sometimes we’re tired of fighting,” she added. “But it feels like the only thing we have to do is fight.”