Hundreds of demonstrators poured into downtown Pittsburgh Monday to protest low wages at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, escalating a two-year showdown between labor groups and the area's largest employer.
The Service Employees International Union has been trying to organize service workers at the hospital for at least two years. Joined by steel and mine workers on Monday, pro-union employees of UPMC marched to the hospital's headquarters at the U.S. Steel Tower with some specific demands: a hospital minimum wage of $15, the elimination of employees' health care debts to the hospital and recognition of a union.
"UPMC paints a picture of workers making $21 an hour, or $30 an hour," Chaney Lewis, a 31-year-old patient monitor technician and nine-year veteran of the hospital, told The Huffington Post. "I make $11.97 ... A lot of long-term employees with 10 or 15 years are not even making 15 bucks an hour. We get pennies for raises and our health care [cost] goes up on top of it."
Read More...
More on Pittsburgh
source
No comments:
Post a Comment