NYTImes.com April 2, 2014: A Union Aims at Pittsburgh’s Biggest Employer

PITTSBURGH — For decades, United States Steel was this city’s dominant employer, but now the biggest employer is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, with its 22 hospitals and 62,000 workers.

As if to highlight how the service sector has supplanted manufacturing, UPMC’s letters are emblazoned 20 feet high atop the city’s tallest building, the U.S. Steel Center Tower.

And just as labor unions famously clashed with Andrew Carnegie, UPMC faces its own labor showdown. The Service Employees International Union is seeking to organize more than 10,000 of UPMC’s service workers, and demanding that the hospital system be a leader, much like U.S. Steel once was, in raising wages.

The union is expert at making life unpleasant for employers, and it has not spared UPMC. The union staged a traffic-clogging protest outside UPMC’s headquarters and helped create community groups that accuse UPMC of paying poverty-level wages.

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