In the spring of 2018, the lowest paid workers within Colorado’s Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth (SCL) hospitals received a professionally designed communication announcing some grim news. Shift differential, a major factor in determining hourly wages and income, was to be slashed by hospital administration. Citing a vague “Market study” sponsored by management, top-earning executives had concluded that a spectrum of frontline health care workers were getting paid too much.
Pay cuts to low-earning health care workers are devastating. Alongside substandard benefits, wages for emergency medical technicians, CNAs and patient transporters are already insufficient to cover the cost of living on Colorado’s front range. Skyrocketing housing prices, increasing medical costs, insecure retirement, and any number of unforeseen expenses are ongoing stressors for most. None of this factored into the “market survey” conducted by the SCL upper management.
We Do The Work’s Eddie Asher, a prior EMT of SCL Lutheran Medical Center and Cliff Willmeng, an RN who had worked at both Lutheran and SCL Good Samaritan Medical Center, began an investigation into the wage cuts. Obtaining company communications, WDTW uncovered the process and expectations of the upper management. The workers were supposed to roll over and accept that the health care giant simply could not afford to pay them a living wage.
The tax forms of SCL, obtained by WDTW showed that the belt-tightening measures promoted by upper management, were only falling on the lowest paid workers. The executives were exempt from pay cuts and were even receiving enormous raises. Some were making over seven figures.
Eddie Asher contacted upper management to get a transparent reaction to these facts. The CEOs were not used to this at all. Due to the nonunion culture of SCL workplaces, maneuvers hurting the bottom line workers were typically conducted away from the public eye and without any transparency or accountability at all. Like those prior maneuvers, the pay cuts were supposed to play out the same.
They didn’t play out the same.
Upper management avoided all contact with We Do The Work. Shortly after word of the investigation began to spread, managers learned of the WDTW Facebook page and discovered employee followers of the worker run media. This increased the attention the story received. Things were not looking good for administration.
Within several weeks a shift in plans emerged. All of the wage cuts for existing employees were removed. SCL emails obtained by We Do The Work showed the cuts were suddenly being withdrawn. Management acted as if they’d found a $20 dollar bill in the clothes dryer and that the cuts were no longer necessary. They were triumphant in the announcement and even went further to provide an explanation; upper management had heard the voice of the workers and had acted swiftly to champion the end of the cuts! Yes, the same group that had communicated the need to end shift differential were now taking credit for ending the plan.
Administration followed the announcement by requesting hospital employees complete a survey. The survey was part of the hospital system’s application to the Denver Business Journal’s 2018 Best Places to Work. Yes, you heard that right.
The defeat of the wage cuts was a first-time victory for We Do The Work and the front line fighters in the nonunion hospitals of Colorado. Combined, we were able to take the offensive and turn the back the pressure back on upper management. They were not used to this. After attempting to avoid the issue, they ultimately capitulated, and the wage cuts were eliminated for everyone except new employees. With more organizing and a mobilized workforce we could possibly have defeated the cuts for new employees as well and maybe even been able to demand raises for all.
For all of this, WDTW would like to extend our thanks to the working people at SCL, and for being there on the front line when we, or our family members, are in need. Let’s take this example of worker run journalism and rank and file resistance to work places all over the country. There is no telling what we might win.
