ACA, Medicare southern call centers ring in the first day of open enrollment with a strike

 Nov. 1 marked the first day of Affordable Care Act (ACA) open enrollment and the beginning of the largest nonunion strike since the beginning of 2021. It is estimated that over 650 workers at Maximus call centers charged with meeting the influx of open enrollment calls have gone on strike in search of fair wages and treatment.

Maximus is the nation’s largest federal call center contractor. Workers from several call centers—in Bogalusa, Louisiana; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; London, Kentucky; and Chester, Virginia—have pledged to strike until they receive a base pay of $25. With a rise in inflation, workers of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contractor wrote in a press release that they have struggled to provide the care necessities for their families.

“We don't want to patch; we want a new foundation,” Tiffany Murray, a worker in the Hattiesburg call center, told Fierce Healthcare. “Fix a flat, we don't need that. We need a whole new tire moving forward. So going out is going to show them that you can't just pacify us with a bonus. We need our rights.”

During open enrollment, call volume substantially increases in facilities that handle Medicare and ACA Federally Facilitated Marketplace calls. Maximus workers also demand clear policies protecting them from abusive calls, such as the ability to disconnect or escalate calls immediately without fear of punishment. 

Workers claim that management has been largely dismissive of racial and sexual harassment from callers. For this reason, their third demand is 30 minutes of allocated time within an eight-hour shift to compose themselves between calls.

ACA enrollment takes place annually between Nov. 1 and in most states lasts until Jan. 15. To access coverage that begins Jan. 1, members must enroll by Dec. 15. ACA coverage helped the nation reach a near-record low uninsured rate with 35 million patients being covered in 2022. Coverage increased by 27 million since 2020.

The Virginia-based employer maintains one of the largest federally contracted workforces in the country through its call center contract with CMS.

Maximus workers are organizing with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

“It is not by accident that Black women from Mississippi and Louisiana are the ones to call out this injustice of our system that expects them to be essential workers but does not treat them as human beings who matter,” said Charles Taylor, executive director of the NAACP Mississippi state conference, in a press conference with Maximus workers and CWA. “We are seeing the consequences of generational divestment and leadership falling heavy on predominately African American communities.”

CWA states that the current base pay rate at all Maximus CMS call centers is about half the wage rate needed for a parent with one child to meet minimum standards of living, a dollar amount determined by the MIT Living Wage Calculator.

Eight out of 10 Maximus call centers are located in Southern states where inflation increased costs by 8.7% last year, with the price of groceries increasing by 13.2%, household energy costs by 19.9% and gas by 13.9%.

Maximus workers at the relevant call centers were offered $200 from management if they did not join the strike. Management allegedly has communicated anti-union sentiments in worker training sessions by stating that a third party is not needed to maintain a cohesive relationship between workers and employees. CWA has previously accused Maximus of union-busting tactics.

“When that check comes after the two weeks, they're going to tax our bonus check that we worked so hard for as opposed to us going out and striking for our rights and our dignity,” Murray said. “We're standing outside letting them know that this $200 Band-Aid cannot cover up a full-size wound.”

Maximus workers previously wrote letters to their CEO stating that workers delayed healthcare because of the company’s expensive health insurance. In August 2019, workers in a Kansas Maximus facility filed a complaint with the Department of Labor alleging that the company was misclassifying and underpaying its employees, the tenth complaint of such since 2017.  

In 2022, the company made headlines again after workers said they were afraid that co-workers with COVID-19 were still coming into work because they could not afford to take time off.

Steven Meyer, an Oklahoma City Apple employee who was a part of a successful union drive, shared his own experience with Maximus workers during a CWA press conference.

“Over time, I noticed my co-workers at Apple quit not because they liked the job but because their individual efforts to maintain the good parts of it and improve the bad parts got lost in the corporate system of feedback that seems designed to lose such concerns,” Meyer said.

The Apple branch in question was the second of the tech giant’s stores to complete a successful drive since June. Both have yet to receive recognition from the tech giant. In recent months, Apple workers' strikes have spread, most notably in Australia.

Tech employee strikes have increased in recent years with one Amazon fulfillment facility now being unionized. Recent months have also brought the stepping out of healthcare workers, especially nurses and behavioral health providers, demanding better pay and working conditions as burnout soars.  

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/aca-medicare-southern-call-centers-ring-first-day-open-enrollment-strike