The UE Local 150 Council in the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has launched a major campaign for Safe Staffing which included demands for raising wages by 20 percent or to $20 per hour minimum wage. In response to our agitation and news coverage around extreme understaffing and even patient deaths, Secretary of DHHS Kody Kinsley organized a listening tour across the state, hosting town hall meetings.
Our union had previously won a 10 percent premium pay for the understaffing faced by all direct care staff. However, when the 4 percent state salary increase became effective in the July 1, 2023 budget, DHHS decided to take away this 10 percent, resulting in a 6 percent pay cut that angered workers.
Our members were able to successfully attend and speak-out at hearings in Greenville, Morganton and New Bern. Union leaders confronted DHHS and key legislative oversight committee members on the major struggles on the job maintaining quality services and a safe workplace with severe understaffing. These ultimately resulted in a re-establishment of meet-n-confer sessions with Deputy Secretary Mark Benton, who has now met with our members three times.
Our members are dedicated to increasing our coordinated collective action across the state. In late 2023, the DHHS Council launched a petition campaign that was able to get several hundred signatures across the department and resulted in actions at Longleaf Center, Cherry Hospital and Central Regional Hospital (CRH). The petition demanded not just higher wages, but also holding management accountable.
Workers at CRH, in particular, began documenting and working to expose abusive management. The actions engaged many new workers in collective action. Several workers at Longleaf participated in a rally in the middle of the rain! Similarly, for the first time in recent years, workers at Cherry Hospital organized a delegation to confront their new CEO with the petition signatures. Workers then delivered the petitions in a meeting with Deputy Secretary Benton, continuing to expose that not only low wages, but also abusive management has lead to brain drain and loss of staff at key DHHS facilities, most notably at CRH, Murdoch, Caswell and Cherry.
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