by Hunter Tower
Two years ago, hell-bent on getting its hooks into the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) – the largest private workforce in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania – SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania effectively bought the Pittsburgh mayor’s office.
In November, the union intends to pay more than twice as much to consolidate its monopoly over the region’s chief executives by adding the Allegheny County executive’s office to its collection. And it’s employing the same winning strategy to do so: spending bucketloads of someone else’s money.
Specifically, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lavished more than $350,000 of its members’ dues money on Ed Gainey’s successful mayoral campaign in 2021. Union leaders never bothered to poll the rank and file about whether they’d prefer their hard-earned dollars be used to improve their own wages and working conditions rather than feathering the union’s nest.
Gainey, on the other hand, knows exactly who he’s working for.
Once in office, he promptly installed a motley assortment of union operatives in key positions within his administration.
Silas Russell, SEIU Healthcare executive vice president and political director, co-chaired Gainey’s transition team and was later named to the city Planning Commission. Maria Montano, former SEIU Healthcare communications director, is now Gainey’s press secretary; and Lisa Frank, former SEIU vice president and director of strategic communications, is now the City of Pittsburgh’s chief operating officer.
How’s that working out? Great for the union, but less so for the city. Russell’s appointment, in fact, was so egregious that even Pittsburgh’s left-leaning city council was obliged to refer it to the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission.
In emails uncovered through right-to-know requests by CBS Pittsburgh, Russell provided the mayor with union-generated talking points ahead of a meeting last year with UPMC officials.
Meanwhile, after UPMC rebuffed SEIU’s unionization efforts, the mayor has declined to attend any UPMC construction or opening events – a not-so-subtle display of hostility against one of the largest employers in the Commonwealth.
Gainey has also walked away from a $40 million commitment from UPMC to fund city initiatives such as public works and maintenance projects. How precisely do the residents of Pittsburgh who aren’t tied financially to SEIU and who need quality health care at an affordable price benefit from these backroom deals and broken promises?
That’s the annoying thing about puppets – they don’t spontaneously develop integrity. Once bought, they typically stay bought.
And speaking of expensive transactions, SEIU has already contributed at least $280,000 to Sara Innamorato’s successful Democratic primary bid to be the next Allegheny County executive. The Working Families Party, an SEIU front group, purchased $400,000 of television ads in support of her candidacy.
Heaven knows what the tab will run to by the time it’s totaled up in November, but to the people who run SEIU, it’s an investment worth making – particularly when you can do it using someone else’s money.
And just to close the loop, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania on May 18 filed an antitrust complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice against UPMC, alleging that the system is abusing its power in the marketplace.
SEIU Healthcare, along with the Strategic Organizing Center, alleges in a 55-page complaint that UPMC’s rapid growth in Pennsylvania’s health-care landscape represents a de facto violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act because it promotes anticompetitive behavior.
The upside-down priorities in this tawdry soap opera were perfectly encapsulated by allegations in the complaint that the health system has discovered a way to maximize profits by keeping staff underpaid and overworked.
This just in: it’s the business of for-profit enterprises to earn a profit, not line union pockets. How exactly is UPMC expected to pay higher union wages unless it raises health-care costs – something no one wants?
Like any employer, UPMC has to walk the tightrope of paying its employees as much as it takes to attract the level of talent it requires but as little as possible in order to keep the costs down for consumers. That’s how free markets work.
Union leaders like those running SEIU know that the laws of economics are immutable. They just don’t care.
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Hunter Tower is the East Coast director for the Freedom Foundation.
Photo “SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania Protest” by SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania.
