SEIU, SOC accuse PA's largest health system of widespread abuses of market power.

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In the 55-page complaint, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and the Strategic Organizing Center allege that UPMC uses its market power to suppress wages, reduce staff, and hamstring organizing.

UPMC workers in a survey compiled by the SEIU report 'a shockingly high level of concerns regarding potential retaliation for raising issues regarding working conditions.'

UPMC did not respond Thursday to HealthLeaders' requests for comment.

Unionized workers at UPMC on Thursday filed what they say is a first-of-its-kind formal request with the U.S. Justice Department to investigate alleged wage suppression, onerous staff workloads, and retaliation against workers who complain at the Pittsburgh-based mega-system.

In the 55-page complaint, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and the Strategic Organizing Center allege that "UPMC not only acquired monopolies and their equivalent in labor markets – monopsonies – in several Pennsylvania hospital markets, but also took anticompetitive actions that maintained and expanded those monopsonies over workers, in violation of federal antitrust laws."

"Nowhere has UPMC exercised its dominance more aggressively than in labor markets," the complaint says. "UPMC's monopsony power has enabled UPMC to suppress workers' wages and benefits, drastically increase their workloads, and prevent workers from exiting or improving these working conditions through a draconian...

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