Express Scripts - or ESI, is a wildly profitable company. Worth $26.5 billion, they are the second largest prescription medical supplier in the country and even during the recession, they pulled in a hefty profit. The CEO, George Paz, made more than $10 million for himself last year and is on track to top those figures just this year.
Paz, along with the rest of management, recently went to SEIU and demanded $8.8 million in concessions to raise the company's bottom line and keep them "competitive," even at a time where the company is reaping record profits.
The union turned around with a package valued at $8 million -- and it was flatly rejected by management.
Despite a 41% increase in profits this year over 2009, ESI plans to shut down one Bensalem, PA facility on December 16th, eliminating 350 jobs two weeks before Christmas. These are the same workers that ESI thanked in 2009 for setting a nationwide one-day efficiency record in processing prescriptions.
The company continues to threaten shutting down their other Bensalem facility, which employs another 650 workers, if employees do not accept draconian and unjustified concession demands. The workers have already offered $8 million in concessions to the company
Obviously Paz wants to close down his Pennsylvania plants, letting go of the 1,000 workers who did the day to day work in making the company hugely profitable.
The issue here is that not only are the workers going to lose their good paying jobs and a time when they are becoming fewer and fewer, but patients are also going to suffer.
How is Paz going to keep the work flow up to snuff in a manufacturing segment that requires highly skilled and trained workers?
What will happen to the patients if they start getting the wrong medications from inexperienced workers?
The company is not just demanding economic concessions -- they seem to want to prevent workers' freedom of speech when it comes to conversing with any government regulators. About twenty percent of ESI's business is with the federal government. Yet, ESI forbids its workers from talking to government regulators? It's unclear how that can possibly translate into a workable situation.
The workers at Express Scripts decided not to take this lying down and are instead fighting back.
They want to keep the jobs they love and that they know they are good at.
To begin with, a group of the workers went up to NY the other day to talk to investors. The idea is that these investors should know Paz's plan and how that is going to affect their investment with the company. After that meet and greet in NY with investors, the company panicked and suspended three of the workers without pay.
Jackie Dixon, Debbie Dronsfield and Ken Smith - the three suspended workers - have 31 years of service between them. This is intimidation, pure and simple and is intended to send a message to the workforce that the company will further punish anyone who threatens their plans.
Today, SEIU is fighting back by holding a rally at the comnpany's headquarters in Bensalem, PA on 4850 Street Road from 4 to 7 today.
You can also support the workers through a couple of direct and simple actions:
- Like the campaign on FaceBook. Get on that page, like them, show your solidarity. Feel free to tell them who you are, what you do and why you support them in their fight, I am sure that those kind of notes will go a long way for these workers.
- Follow the campaign on Twitter through twitter.com/unionreviewand twitter.com/esiworkers_pa Once there, please re/tweet so that you followers can spread the word for us.
- Send letters to George Paz, ESI's CEO.
and,
- Get people to sign the petition in support of the workers who one year ago were honored for setting productivity records and making the company as profitable as it is today.