FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 
March 11, 2026

Media Contact: 
mediarelations@seiu-uhw.org

Riverside, Calif. – Frontline healthcare workers will picket Thursday, March 12, at 12pm outside HCA’s Riverside Community Hospital. This action is the third in a series of protests being held this spring across HCA Healthcare facilities in California.

More than 2,000 healthcare workers, who are currently in bargaining with management over short staffing and other issues, are concerned that the company’s profit focus is impacting worker and patient safety.

“We want HCA to prioritize its patients, not shareholders,” said Elisha Smotherman-Gipson, a Patient Care Tech at Riverside Community Hospital. “Executives need to reinvest some of those massive profits into the workforce to fix the staffing shortages at our hospitals. Chronic understaffing means caregivers are doing the work of two or three people. That leads to longer wait times, avoidable errors and burnout.”

These pickets against the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare system began last week, when caregivers picketed outside Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose and Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks. Workers say they are calling on executives at HCA to address staffing levels workers feel are unsafe and ensure wages keep up with the cost of living, adding that years of low pay have led to high turnover as experienced employees leave for better-paying jobs.

The protests come as HCA reported $5.76 billion in profit in 2024, nearly double the earnings of the next most profitable hospital chain. Caregivers say the company should invest more of its profits in frontline staff to support safe, quality patient care.

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SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) is a healthcare justice union of more than 120,000 healthcare workers, patients, and healthcare activists united to ensure affordable, accessible, high-quality care for all Californians provided by valued and respected healthcare workers. Learn more at www.seiu-uhw.org.