EXCLUSIVE — All 535 members of Congress will be greeted with a new lobbying campaign hanging on their office doors when they return to Capitol Hill on Monday from a more than monthlong summer recess .
A center-right labor union watchdog is escalating its involvement in a messy Washington fight among a labor union, a federal contractor, lawmakers, and the Biden administration .
The Public Labor Unions Accountability Committee is launching a five-figure canvassing and digital ad campaign, including door hangers on all House, Senate, and committee offices, to urge the Department of Health and Human Services against reneging with the company running call centers for Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.
Opponents to HHS reopening the contract, worth a whopping $6.6 billion over nine years, say it jeopardizes the government’s ability to provide healthcare insurance assistance to tens of millions of people through services such as 1-800-MEDICARE and the ACA equivalent.
The administration is being accused by Republican and anti-union critics of playing politics in an election year by siding with a major labor union over seniors and others in search of help obtaining medical coverage.
"The Biden-Harris administration is forcing select businesses to unionize against their wishes and hurting vulnerable senior citizens seeking Medicare assistance in the process,” said Tommy Thompson, a senior adviser for PLUAC and former GOP governor of Wisconsin. “This political move will increase wait times, decrease customer service, and diminish the goals of the Medicare hotline — all at the expense of elderly Americans across the country.”
The group’s 30-second ad seeks to put its concerns into starker terms, featuring elderly couples trying to reach government health insurance call centers only to be put on hold for hours.
“Hello, thank you for calling the Center for Medicare helpline,” a fictitious automated message says. “Due to forced unionization of this call center, your expected wait time is … 3 hours.”
HHS has repeatedly defended its decision in December 2023 to end a nine-year contract after just 15 months, saying a “labor harmony agreement” was violated by Maximus, which is based in McLean, Virginia, and is the largest federal call center employer with more than 10,000 workers. The harmony pledge entailed Maximus maintaining a peaceful relationship with unions and not experiencing labor stoppages.
The Communications Workers of America labor union has played a major role in supporting employees’ efforts to unionize for better pay and working conditions and has helped organize walkouts in the past year.
PLUAC particularly hopes to use its campaign to pressure Democrats, who have received $784,000 from CWA this election cycle, according to Open Secrets . That amount approaches $20 million over the past three decades. By comparison, Republicans have received $20,000 and $306,000, respectively.
Bids for a new contract under HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were due in late June.
After the publication of this story, CWA downplayed concerns about service disruptions to would-be customers seeking information on health insurance by leaving Maximus.
"CMS has all the legal tools it needs to ensure continuity of service for Medicare and ACA participants," CWA communications director Beth Allen said in a statement. "It is ridiculous to claim that CMS would consider replacing a contractor if it believed that such assistance could be put at risk. For Maximus and its allies to argue that any transition to a new contractor jeopardizes service delivery is tantamount to saying that Maximus should enjoy a perpetual contract."
Maximus has denied any wrongdoing within its contract or with its employees and has called HHS’s actions “premature, improper, and unlawful.” Prior to its September 2022 contract, Maximus provided the same call center services with the “highest customer satisfaction scores within the federal government,” according to the CMS at the time. The scores were 95% for Medicare and 92% for the ACA.
HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
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HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra has denied that unions or congressional Democrats who have lobbied to ditch Maximus played a role in their decision.
“There’s no one that’s influencing [it],” Becerra told reporters this summer, according to The Washington Post . “Even I don’t get into that process that CMS undertakes on a contract bidding process. They are essentially in their bubble doing that work.”
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