Green Party Celebrates Victory of Magee-Womens Hospital Nurses
Green Party of Pennsylvania
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, September 19, 2025
MEDIA CONTACT
Chris Robinson, Communication Team Co-Leader
Green Party Celebrates Victory of Magee-Womens Hospital Nurses
On September 6, the Green Party of Pennsylvania (GPPA) Steering Committee proudly stood in celebration with the workers of UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in their historic vote to unionize. Nearly 1,000 healthcare professionals -- nurses, technicians, service staff, and support workers -- voted to join SEIU Healthcare PA. They are the backbone of one of Pennsylvania’s most critical healthcare institutions.
Bryarr Misner, an organizer with the Green Party of Allegheny County, said, “Their courage to organize, especially in the face of intense corporate pressure, sends a clear message: healthcare workers will no longer be silenced or sidelined in the fight for dignity, fairness, and respect. Magee-Womens is the first hospital within the UPMC system to successfully unionize through a new election, marking a watershed moment for healthcare workers across Pennsylvania. Their victory builds on the strength of existing unions, such as those at UPMC Washington (formerly Washington Health System), where workers secured meaningful wage gains after affiliation. Together, these struggles demonstrate that collective organizing is not only possible at UPMC but powerful enough to win real change.”
Unionizing is a necessary and just step toward ensuring fair wages, safe staffing levels, and dignified working conditions for those who provide essential care. For too long, UPMC executives have prioritized profits and million-dollar salaries over the wellbeing of patients and workers alike. By forming a union, Magee-Womens workers are taking their rightful seat at the table where decisions about their lives and their patients’ care are made.
SEIU Healthcare PA said, “Magee nurses have watched closely as union nurses at Allegheny General, West Penn, UPMC Western Psychiatric, Hershey Medical Center and Geisinger Wyoming Valley have won historic union contracts which have significantly improved staffing, recruitment and retention. Magee nurses say they want to unite with those union nurses, and inspire thousands of others, so that together they can raise standards across the region, take back their profession and transform the broken healthcare system to ensure patients’ needs come first.”
GPPA Steering Committee Member Colleen Schmotzer (Allegheny) said, “The Green Party’s Ten Key Values -- including social justice and equal opportunity, grassroots democracy, feminism and gender equity, and community-based economics -- speak directly to this struggle. The effort to unionize Magee-Womens is an act of democracy in the workplace, ensuring that those who provide care also have a voice in shaping it. It is a pursuit of justice: demanding safe conditions, fair pay, and respect for all workers, regardless of position. It reflects a feminist commitment to empowering a largely female workforce, and a community-based vision of economics where healthcare decisions are made for people, not for profit.”
“The Green Party of Pennsylvania calls on UPMC executives to respect and recognize this union without obstruction,” continued Schmotzer, “and we call on our communities and elected officials to support these workers in their struggle. Healthcare is a human right, and protecting those who deliver it is inseparable from protecting the patients they serve. The workers of Magee-Womens Hospital are building power not only for themselves but for a fairer, stronger healthcare system for us all. The Green Party is proud to celebrate with them.”
The Green Party of Pennsylvania (GPPA), https://www.gpofpa.org, is an independent political party which stands in opposition to the two corporate parties. GPPA candidates promote public policy based on the Green Party’s Four Pillars: grassroots democracy, nonviolence, ecological wisdom, and social justice/equal opportunity. For further information about GPPA, please email [email protected]. Please follow GPPA on social media: Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/gpofpa/; Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/pagreenparty/; and X, https://x.com/GreenPartyofPA
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