UPMC Passavant-Cranberry, located at 1 St. Francis Way in Cranberry Township. Butler Eagle File Photo

The state’s largest nongovernmental employer, UPMC, is being sued by a previous employee for its “monopsony power,” according to a class-action complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, Jan. 18, alleges UPMC prevented workers from improving their working conditions, suppressed worker wages and benefits and “drastically increase(d) their workloads, through a draconian system of mobility restrictions and widespread labor law violations that lock employees into sub-competitive pay and working conditions.”

According to the complaint, plaintiff Victoria Ross previously worked as a nurse at UPMC Hamot, a 458-bed hospital in Erie.

UPMC has more than 95,000 employees and 40 hospitals, including UPMC Passavant in Cranberry Township.

The lawsuit accuses UPMC of anti-competitive conduct and said the health system prevents workers from leaving their positions or improving their working conditions.

“UPMC’s mistreatment of its Skilled Healthcare Workers is one part of an overarching anti-competitive scheme,” according to the lawsuit. “Implemented by UPMC to acquire and exploit monopoly power over the provision of hospital output services and monopsony power over the employment of hospital workers.”

The claims mirror those laid out in an antitrust lawsuit filed against the health care system in May 2023 by the labor organizations, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and the Strategic Organizing Center.

The lawsuit also alleges UPMC made about 28 acquisitions of competitor health care services from 1996 to 2018 to expand UPMC’s market power and not to expand the reach of health care to the communities served by the facilities.

“… at the same time that UPMC was acquiring these facilities, it was also reducing the availability of health care services within the Relevant Market,” the lawsuit claims. “During the 1996-2019 period, UPMC closed four hospitals and downsized three others, eliminating 353 beds and 1,367 full-time and 433 part-time health care service jobs, resulting in reduced health care quality and outcomes as well as reduced employment opportunities for the communities those hospitals served.”

Wages are a point of contention in the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims workers' wages were less than other comparable hospital workers. The lawsuit also claims that for every 10% increase in UPMC’s market share, workers’ pay was reduced by 30 to 57 cents per hour.

UPMC has annual revenue of $26 billion.

The “wage penalty” applied to nearly all UPMC employees including the plaintiff class of “skilled health care workers” as well as other categories of UPMC employees, including laundry and linen workers and contract housekeepers, according to the lawsuit.

Reached for comment, Gloria Kreps, UPMC’s vice president of public relations, said in an email that UPMC plans on moving to $18 an hour for nonunion workers by 2025.

“UPMC is among the best places to work in all the regions we serve ... due to our wages and our above-industry employee benefits, which are designed to support our employees and their families,” Kreps said.