Last month, Audrianna Lewis, a call center worker for Medicare, gave Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra a piece of her mind. At a Black Health Forum on improving health equity, she told Secretary Becerra about the reality she and her co-workers are facing, as they spend their days helping people unkink the snarls of American health care coverage.
“Our [health care] deductible is outrageous,” she said. “We’re going to have to see a change, Mr. Becerra, [or] we going to have to continue to strike.” Lewis says he told her to “stay tuned.”
What about:
🚨HAPPENING NOW🚨Our coworker, Audrianna Lewis travelled to DC to join today’s @HHSGov Black Health Forum. She was able to speak with @SecBecerra, letting him know that we are burdened by high costs and medical debt at Maximus. pic.twitter.com/uzFw7WuEIQ
— Call Center Workers United (@CCWUnited) February 28, 2024
Lewis works alongside hundreds of workers at a call center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi; she’s one of about 10,000 call center workers employed by Maximus Inc. She answers calls for Medicare and the national Health Insurance Marketplace, part of a nine-year, $6.6 billion contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), under the aegis of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Maximus workers at several of the company’s call centers around the country are organizing under the Communications Workers of America. They went on strike last November in what the union is calling the largest federal call center strike in history.
As Capital & Main reported last fall, Maximus workers are demanding affordable health care coverage, a starting wage of $25 an hour, job security and an end to the company’s alleged union-busting practices as they work to provide federally funded services. This, they say, is in line with the Good Jobs Principles promoted by the Biden administration’s Department of Labor. These principles include equitable hiring practices, “family-sustaining benefits,” the right to unionize, a living wage and the opportunity for advancement.
It’s also something workers think the Department of Health and Human Services — and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, which holds the contract with Maximus — can require. “As Maximus’ customer, CMS has tremendous power over what happens in these call centers,” said a spokesperson for the Communications Workers of America.
“My job isn’t a good job,” Lewis said, adding that her plight shows the Biden administration has not delivered on its promise of good jobs. “I am a Black woman working for Maximus, something that Secretary Becerra is [administering], and it feels like a slap in the face, them talking about equity,” she said.
Lewis earns $17.78 an hour. She says that Maximus’ health care plan, with its $1,800 deductible, is not sufficient for her asthma treatment. Within a labyrinthine call center inside a former mall, she answers back-to-back calls for hours, and says she and her co-workers have six minutes daily for bathroom breaks (Maximus denies this).
Pressure from workers and their allies has been mounting since the November strike. In December, workers demonstrated outside of the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters in Washington, D.C., and Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings was arrested alongside them. Last month, laid-off Maximus workers hand-delivered a petition to Secretary Becerra. In mid-February, Maximus worker Lakeisha Preston participated in a roundtable with Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su.
Since 2019, the union has filed 21 Unfair Labor Practice complaints against the company; 10 remain open. The Communications Workers of America alleges that the Maximus management has illegally threatened retaliation against organizing workers, surveilled organizers, provided bonuses to non-striking workers, and attempted to have them removed from the premises while engaging in protected union activities. Maximus commented that “Maximus follows all labor laws and regulations… Maximus respects our employees’ right to choose whether they want to form or join a union.”
Most recently, ahead of Maximus’ annual shareholder meeting on March 12, the SOC Investment Group, an organization that works with union pension funds associated with the Strategic Organizing Center, called for an independent audit to investigate if Maximus has respected its workers’ right to organize. Maximus responded that it had already hired an assessor — law firm Vedder Price, whose website boasts that the firm helps corporations maintain “union-free status.” In a Feb. 2 letter, the SOC investor group asked that shareholders insist upon a neutral assessor for the audit; at the meeting, the measure garnered 26% of independent shareholder votes.
Elected officials including Sen. Bernie Sanders and US Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Greg Casar (D-Texas) have publicly voiced support for the workers.
Neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Department of Labor responded to repeated requests for comment.
All the while, Lewis says that her co-workers inspire her to keep organizing. “This is something we can achieve, especially here in the South.”
“I’m staying tuned,” she said. “And I’m not gonna let up until we see changes.”
