“As we work ourselves to physical and emotional exhaustion to keep up with the surge, HCA is rolling in pandemic profits.”  

SAN JOSE, Calif. – HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare chain, announced more than $1 billion in second quarter profits just days after cutting its payments to workers’ 401k retirement accounts at Regional Medical Center and Good Samaritan Hospital.

The corporation’s stock price jumped 11 percent when the second quarter profits were  announced. The giant hospital chain also has received more than $5 billion in federal coronavirus bailout money and relief.

HCA recently came to its workers demanding they forgo negotiated raises. When the workers refused, citing the intense work and danger brought on by the pandemic, the corporation said it would cut the company’s contribution to their 401k by an equal amount.

“As we work ourselves to physical and emotional exhaustion to keep up with the COVID-19 surge, HCA is rolling in pandemic profits,” said Adrienne Romano, a certified nursing assistant in the mother baby unit at Good Samaritan hospital. “And then, at this critical moment, the corporation chooses to further destroy the morale of the healthcare heroes our community relying on to get through the coronavirus crisis by cutting our retirement.”

Recent figures paint a picture of a healthcare corporation that takes care of its executives even as it turns on its workers. In 2019, the company’s top six executives were paid a combined $57 million in compensation, with the CEO, Samuel Hazen, getting nearly $27 million, or more than $12,870 an hour.

“HCA’s actions demonstrate the extent to which so much of corporate behavior in America is completely detached from the lives of working people and lacks any sense of decency or  fairness,” said Blanca Mendoza, an environmental services worker in the emergency department at Regional Medical Center. “Despite the suffering the pandemic has unleashed, for them it still appears to be all about the money.”

# # # # # # #

SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) is one of the largest unions of hospital workers in the United States, with 97,000 members. Learn more at www.seiu-uhw.org.