(The Center Square) – One-thousand-four-hundred-fifty nurses and other essential workers at Wellspan Chambersburg Hospital announced their upcoming strike on Friday.
Local SEIU members say they will begin picketing July 22nd and plan to strike for five days, during which time they expect the hospital to be staffed by Wellspan.
The employees say the wages and benefits offered are uncompetitive, making it impossible to maintain staffing in an already grueling environment. They say their employers are more focused on profit than patient care.
“This crisis of burnout, understaffing, and turnover has never been addressed, but now it’s time for a reckoning,” said Gayle Alleman, an RN in the Intermediate Care Unit.
Currently, the union is proposing a 7.5% wage increase for 2025 and 5% the two following years. Wellspan has offered 3.5% in 2025 followed by 3%, numbers which workers say don’t come close to meeting inflation. Since 2020, that number is about 24%
“I make only $17.51 cents an hour for my essential work and the living wage for a single person like me in Chambersburg is over $22 an hour,” said Joe Bowman, an environmental services worker charged with cleaning and sanitizing 30 rooms in a single 8-hour shift. “For people with children, the living wage is much higher, but many Chambersburg workers aren’t even close. “
Wellspan’s nine-hospital system generates billions in operating revenue. According to Fitch Ratings, the company generated over $3.9 billion last year, paying CEO Roxanna Gapstur over $3 million in 2024.
Like UPMC and other large health care systems in the state, nonprofit status exempts Wellspan from paying taxes that feed back into the communities where it operates. This has posed challenges in low-income areas where health systems take up significant real estate and tax revenue isn’t sufficient to fund schools and other vital services.
“There used to be a promise in America that if you worked hard and contributed positively to society, your hard work would be rewarded. That promise is being broken by big corporations like Wellspan and others all around our nation,” said Bowman. “That is not quality patient care. That is greed, plain and ugly.”
Bowman says he was born in Chambersburg Hospital, as were his parents and siblings. He grew up aspiring to work there just as his father had throughout his life. Now, he’s seeing work outsourced and corners cut, leaving fewer staff to meet the burden of care.
Bowman and his colleagues are seeking protections to save their jobs and the hospital that has always been a part of their lives. They hope to avoid more losses like Chambersburg’s inpatient pediatric facility which closed in 2023 despite serving 9,100 patients annually.
Jillian Lira, a unit observation secretary who monitors patients’ vitals, spoke tearfully of the distance families must travel to Hershey or York when facing a child’s illness. Lira, too, was born at Chambersburg, as were her parents and both of her children.
“It’s rewarding to work in the same community where I live and give back to my community,” said Lira. “That’s why it’s so difficult when we’re short-handed because it’s very tough to provide the standard of care that our neighbors and family members deserve.”
That standard, workers say, has become increasingly complex as the Chambersburg population ages. The hospital saw over 14,677 admissions in 2024, many of whom were older adults requiring high levels of care.
Wellspan Chambersburg isn’t alone in that challenge. The state has struggled with staffing shortages, particularly in rural areas. Strategies to incentivize medical workers to stay and live in areas of need include recruiting people like Lira and Bowman who have grown up with a connection to the community.
Asked if there was any indication of support or involvement from local legislators in negotiating a deal between the area’s only hospital and its staff, Alleman said they’d received nothing but silence. The hospital is in the districts of Sen. Doug Mastriano and Rep. Rob Kauffman, both Republicans.
The Center Square reached out to Kauffman, but he declined to comment on the ongoing situation. The Center Square was unable to reach Gov. Shapiro’s office at the time of publication.
