PITTSBURGH - Workers at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are hoping a recent decision in an antitrust case against Facebook-owner Meta will work to their advantage, as they sue their employer.
Plaintiffs like Victoria Ross have filed a class action lawsuit against UPMC, arguing it used its power in the market to pay employees less and restrict their movement. The action sparked a Statement of Interest from the U.S. Department of Justice, which has urged a Pittsburgh federal judge to hear the case.
As the sides prepare for a hearing on UPMC's motion to dismiss claims made under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, plaintiffs lawyer Joseph Saveri of San Francisco and others at Levin Sedran & Berman in Philadelphia have made Judge Susan Paradise Baxter aware of what's going on in the FTC's case against Meta in D.C. federal court.
That case alleges a series of acquisitions including Instagram and WhatsApp has left Facebook with a monopoly in the market for "personal social networking services." Meta has argued this is a "contrived market" that fails to include other companies like X, Pinterest or Reddit.
The D.C. court held the FTC could make prima facie claims for anticompetitive conduct by pointing at acquisitions of competitors.
"This holding is highly relevant to the parties' current dispute whether Plaintiffs may properly support Section 2 allegations, that UPMC possessed monopsony power and maintained it through anticompetitive conduct, at least in part by alleging facts regarding UPMC's acquisitions of competitors and expansion of operations through hospital consolidation," the lawyers suing UPMC wrote.
UPMC said the ruling has no impact on its argument for dismissal, given the D.C. judge weighed different issues like Meta allegedly targeting and eliminating future competitors.
"In contrast, Plaintiffs have merely listed mergers in the Amended Complaint without alleging a connection between them and any alleged competitive harm in any plausibly defined market," lawyers for UPMC wrote.
The suit alleges UPMC violated antitrust laws by exploiting its monopoly power to suppress workers' wages and benefits, increase their workloads, and lock them into sub-competitive pay and working conditions.
The complaint accuses UPMC of implementing an overarching anticompetitive scheme to acquire and exploit monopoly power over hospital services and monopsony power over the employment of hospital workers.
It also states that UPMC's growth in the hospital output and labor input markets has largely been achieved through anticompetitive conduct, including a series of mergers and acquisitions aimed at expanding its market power.
UPMC purchased 28 competitors in the healthcare-service industry, the complaint says, to cement its power. UPMC has control of 76% of hospital employees in Pittsburgh, it adds.
UPMC is currently the largest private-sector employer in Pennsylvania with more than 95,000 workers. Over the past two decades, it has expanded its geographic reach and market concentration to comprise more than 40 hospitals located throughout Pennsylvania.
The DOJ's statement of interest, filed in the case in September, said UPMC misapplies the legal standards for Section 2 monopsonization claims.
"Over and over, the motion raises the bar to nearly insurmountable heights for complaints alleging exclusionary conduct that harms workers, demanding a level of granularity that plaintiffs will rarely be able to satisfy pre-discovery," the DOJ wrote.
"The Court should reject defendants' efforts to dismiss plaintiffs' claims that UPMC's alleged exclusionary conduct resulted in tangible harm to workers."