Abortion care workers form union to address their issues and get ‘a seat at the table’

As closing time neared on Friday afternoon, Pittsburgh workers thought of barbecues and beer and prepared to head for the exits so they could get an early start on the holiday weekend. But on narrow Kirkwood Street in the city’s East Liberty neighborhood, Raven Kirksey’s thoughts remained focused on her job.

“I was a patient here for an abortion before I ever started working here,” she said, nodding at the Allegheny Reproductive Health Center across the street. ”I remember my experience as being so normal, and kind. It wasn’t a big deal to come in and, you know, get this care.”

Nobody stared at her or gave her odd looks, she said. She felt no stigma. The place impressed her so much she wanted to work there.

“I was like, ‘Oh, let me get into that,” she said. “I want to be one of those cool people that calms people down at a heightened time in their life. I want to help make people know that ‘This is OK.’ Sometimes, I mean, people are still going to say, ‘This is not OK,’ no matter the circumstances. But I’m here to be that comfort to people who need this. I like being that comfort.”

Providing that care, however, has become more difficult the past several months, she said. And that’s why Kirksey, several of her co-workers and their supporters were standing along Kirkwood Street and singing the labor standard “Solidarity Forever.”

On Tuesday of last week, they announced that more than 80% of the 23 nonmanagement employees had voted to join the Office and Professional Employees International Union as Local 98236. They call themselves the Allegheny Reproductive Justice Union.

They asked management to voluntarily recognize their local and gave them a deadline: 3 o’clock Friday afternoon. And so as that deadline approached, Kirksey and some of her colleagues gathered with supporters outside the facility in anticipation of an answer. Members of the Pittsburgh Labor Choir arrived with their guitars and began strumming the tune “She’ll be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain,” only they’d changed the lyrics. “We’ll be paid a living wage when we win,” everyone sang. Then, “We’ll have a stable workplace when we win.”

Other workers and supporters tricked in. When Nikkole Terney arrived, people applauded and rushed to give her a hug. Until a few weeks ago, Terney worked as director of abortion care. Workers said she was fired for advocating for her colleagues.

After several minutes of singing, Colby Bell, a counselor at the center, stepped forward with an announcement: “It’s 3:13, and we’ve gotten no response from management. That feels like a ‘no.’ It sounds like a ‘no.’”

That inspired the labor choir to lead a chant, “Bring us an answer, bring us an answer.” The wait continued. Hope for quick and easy recognition of the union ebbed.

We asked employees why they’d decided to organize, and they talked of low pay, work hours being cut, excessive work loads, a fear of being laid off or fired.

“You know, sometimes I think, ‘Oh yeah, I’m irreplaceable,'” said Kirksey. “That’s not true. I’m definitely replaceable in a place like this.”

Bell said many worker complaints center around a new administrator.

“Employees just started feeling like they didn’t have a seat at the table in terms of their working conditions,” Bell said.

Changes recently instituted have “turned this job from something that I used to be happy to go to work to every day to something that is causing physical stress to build up in my body,” Bell said. “I have multiple chronic pain conditions, and all of my symptoms have been getting increasingly worse because of the increased stress at the clinic.”

A turning point for many employees was the dismissal of Kerney, whom Bell described as “one of the most outspoken people about pushing back at some of the changes that were being made that she didn’t feel were in the best interest of the clinic and that were hurting employees.”

And the pay? Abortion counselor Emily Quinn said she started out at $14 an hour in 2021 and now makes $19.50 an hour. “And that’s on the high end for our hourly employees, which is all of the staff,” Quinn said.

Bell then chimed in: “We take care of one of the most vulnerable populations that I can think of, people who need abortions, and we deserve to be taken care of, too. Many of my co-workers are on food stamps or on Medicaid and there’s nothing wrong with that, but why are we being paid a wage that requires us to rely on those services?”

PUP called the phone number listed on the center’s website late Friday afternoon to talk to managers about the organizing effort and worker complaints. We left a message but received no response, so we called back the next day. A recorded phone message led us to a mailbox for media requests, but it wasn’t taking any messages.

While waiting to hear whether the union would receive recognition, Kerney, the supervisor who had been dismissed, stood in the back of the gathering and chatted with her former co-workers. She spoke with pride of the work employees perform at the center and talked as though she were still part of the team.

“We provide a level of care that you can’t get anywhere else,” she said. “We work hours that other people aren’t willing to work. We provide a level of care that people aren’t willing to provide. We provide a level of empathy that most health care providers don’t offer. So there’s a level of burnout. There’s a level of just stress in abortion care that a lot of people aren’t used to. And so we do overextend ourselves a lot. We have to fight for what we deserve.”

Terney then looked out at her former co-workers, still standing on Kirkwood Street and waiting for an answer.

“And that’s why they’re out here.”

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The union later posted a message on its Instagram page noting that the center’s management had “chosen to go against the wishes of the vast majority of their staff and are not voluntarily recognizing our union. It is shameful that they did not have the decency to even give us a decision. We have already filed for an election with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) and are confident given the strength of our unit that we will win.”