SAINT PAUL – Members of SEIU Healthcare MN & IA at Planned Parenthood North Central States are speaking out following the news that PPNCS leadership unilaterally cut off contributions to their 403(b) retirement plans just days after announcing their latest round of staff layoffs, which saw 38 union staff laid off with only a handful getting reassignment offers.

The recent cuts did not just hit staff, but also the community. PPNCS leaders closed the Iowa City health center, leaving just one PPNCS clinic open in Iowa. Leadership also shut down the entire community education and engagement department, ending the age-appropriate and culturally competent sexual and reproductive educational programs they ran in communities throughout the Midwest.

Nicole Anschutz, a Triage Registered Nurse at PPNCS and Executive Board member of SEIU Healthcare MN & IA, shared the following statement about how leadership’s decisions continue to put stress on the frontline workers who do critical work every day:

“The news of another round of layoffs has hit PPNCS staff really hard. When we learned that employer matching contributions to the 403(b) retirement plan would be suspended, it added to this devastation. This decision feels like the final nail in the coffin for being able to have any hope of retaining long-term employees. This is essentially up to a 3% pay cut, depending on how much each person has been contributing to retirement from their wages. We are calling on PPNCS leadership to reconsider this decision and recognize how much they actually save by retaining skilled, experienced long-term employees, rather than having to close down clinics because they cannot keep them staffed. Some of us have stayed through these hard times, but there is only so much we can take. Both the organization and our patients will suffer if PPNCS loses its experts in sexual and reproductive healthcare.”

SEIU members at PPNCS will be bargaining their next union contract later this year, and will be pushing to secure employer contributions to retirement that can’t be suspended,  in addition to other demands to hold leadership accountable to supporting the staff who make PPNCS run.

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