At 23, a Healthcare Job is Good. A Union Could Make It Great.

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projects healthcare will be the largest employer in America by 2026. In Pittsburgh, that’s been true for years now. We’re competing for Amazon’s H2 and Uber’s self-driving cars crawl our streets, but the big business of healthcare still reigns supreme. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) — the state’s largest employer — brings in $14 billion in revenue and employs about 80,000 people, roughly a third of Pittsburgh’s total population.

Maria Scifo is a nursing assistant at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic and a student at Carlow University in Pittsburgh.

Like many of my friends, I decided in high school that if I wanted a good life for myself and to make enough to pay the bills and have a family, getting a job in healthcare was probably a good bet.

So, step one: I enrolled in the nursing program at Carlow University, from which I’ll be graduating in May. Step two: I’m working part-time as a nursing assistant on the adult aging floor at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, a specialty hospital owned by UPMC, to get some practical experience and money to cover school. I’m paid about $13 an hour.

I thought those were all the right moves to securing a good job in a profitable, growing industry. After some time on the job, I’ve seen we need a third step: to form a union.

My generation often thinks of unions as a thing of a past. In Pittsburgh, we hear about what steelworkers and their unions did to build our middle class. I never expected unions would matter to my life until I needed to make my workplace better.

Before the holidays this year, our department’s manager brought me and my co-workers together to tell us that starting immediately, we were required to work all holidays and weekends. I’m supposed to work 8 hours per week, but in a moment — and without discussion — my hours tripled. I worked Christmas, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

This is not to say that I’m against demanding work or long hours. I go above and beyond for my patients and work alongside hardened nurses who rightly expect my work to be fast and accurate. At night, I often work the floor alone, checking vitals and observing closely for changes in our patients’ conditions.

My concern is that when our schedules at work are revised unilaterally without any kind of consideration or input from my colleagues and me, it takes away our voice at work and our ability to find solutions to the staffing challenges we face, as well as balance work with other responsibilities. I want to be the best possible nurse. I can also have legitimate concerns, questions and even good ideas about how the important time we dedicate to our patients is being managed. Nurses having a voice and well-run facilities aren’t mutually exclusive, despite what we hear from management.

And that’s why, despite hearing from everyone that UPMC would never let us form a union, my fellow nursing assistants and I decided it was time to just be one. My co-workers and I got together and asked for a group meeting with our supervisor to talk about creating a more fair and workable schedule. Our manager refused, and instead scheduled us for one-on-one meetings, which of course, would prevent us from solving the problem together. So for my meeting, I brought two nursing assistants and RNs so that we could make some progress, not just air our concerns. My co-workers did the same. And you know what? We’ve started a real conversation about scheduling.

For the first time, I felt the power of standing with my colleagues and supporting each other to improve our workplace. Instead of working in a tense, unhappy place, we worked together to talk about the issues that are important to us. After that experience, it doesn’t surprise me that 75 percent of people ages 18 to 29 view unions favorably and that union membership is one key indicator of happiness.

For me, collective action is the key to progress. The experiences of other Pittsburgh healthcare workers bear this out too. A recent study by the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work detailed how hospital workers who won their union were able to negotiate wage increases that reduced the pain of food insecurity and medical debt.

As other cities follow Pittsburgh and healthcare jobs dominate more economies, take a lesson from our past: we need unions to make the work of the future work for us.

Maria Scifo is a nursing assistant at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic and a student at Carlow University in Pittsburgh.