Two days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Anna “Razor Blade” Flemmings took to a podium in pearls and a red Communication Workers of America union T-shirt and spoke her mind.
“I want better for me, my coworkers and our children,” said Flemmings, 58, who handles calls to 1-800-MEDICARE for Maximus Inc., a government contractor. A couple dozen of her Maximus coworkers, mainly Black women working out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, sat at round tables covered in white plastic tablecloths. Paper plates of baked chicken and macaroni and cheese sat before them and their guests, a handful of children and allies in other labor unions. Behind Flemmings, a projector balanced atop a box of Moonpies showed a photo of Maximus workers at a demonstration in front of the call center just a few miles away.
“Here’s the thing: It may be delayed, but we’re not denied,” said Flemmings, surveying the audience. Though the crowd was modest, it was a local representation of support for the CWA’s efforts to organize roughly 12,000 workers at a dozen call centers. All 12 centers are in right-to-work states, and nine are in the South. Workers at multiple sites have protested, met with officials — even put them on the spot at public events — and staged six work stoppages, according to the CWA.
Supporters of the organizing effort have called into question whether federal funds should go to contractors such as Maximus, which they said attempts to bust union organizing, pays low wages and offers inadequate health insurance. Today, the effort offers a glimpse of just how committed the workers, many of them Black Southern women like Flemmings, are to being represented by a union.
Last spring, after seven years of Maximus workers campaigning for a union, the Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden announced it would ask Maximus to reapply for its $6.6 billion, nine-year contract to run customer service lines for Medicare and the Health Insurance Marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. The company was asked to re-apply for a new contract that included a labor harmony agreement. Flemmings said the department’s action indicated support for the union organizing effort.
“It could have been [that] no one cared,” Flemmings said. “This [rebid] let us know we were being heard.“
Maximus fought the request and filed a lawsuit in objection. In late November, a few weeks after Donald Trump won election to a second presidential term and with Biden still in office, the department canceled its request.
“It was a stumbling block,” Flemmings said after a long pause when asked how she felt upon hearing about the retraction. “There was a lot of hope. Did it hurt? It did. But [the re-bid] showed what we can accomplish.”
Eileen Rivera, Maximus vice president of public relations and communications, told Capital & Main the company is “pleased with the outcome” in January. She declined to offer additional comment.
In January, a CMS spokesperson declined to address the decision, and told Capital & Main the agency was committed to providing “accurate, timely and understandable information.” The agency did not return later requests for comment.
Some observers took a more critical view of the turn of events. “The Maximus story is a cautionary tale of what happens when taxpayer dollars are spent on a firm hell-bent on violating workers’ rights,” said Celine McNicholas, director of policy and general counsel at the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. “Maximus has enjoyed a $6 billion contract with few, if any, strings attached to it — [the Biden] administration could have walked from this contract. Some things are just worth the fight,” she said.
The January lunch was the first public gathering for workers and union supporters after the Department of Health and Human Services withdrew the rebid.
“I stand before you today to let you know I am one of the people who has experienced health issues with the Maximus [insurance],” Flemmings told the crowd, her dark hair in a neat bob. She said she is currently in debt from heart surgery and double cataract surgeries that were not fully covered by her company-provided health insurance.
Flemmings and her colleagues continue to push for affordable health care, a starting wage of $25 per hour and the ability to take breaks between calls. Today, wages start at $17.75 and insurance deductibles are $1,800. In Forrest County, Mississippi, which includes Hattiesburg, a living wage for a single parent with one child (like many of Flemmings’ coworkers) is $32.74.
Workers also said they are not given breaks between back-to-back calls, often from Americans frustrated by trying to navigate the country’s insurance system.
Then there’s the issue of dealing with casual racism by callers, Flemmings said. The majority of Maximus call center workers are Black and Latina women. For workers who are not white even casual epithets — Flemmings says “you people” is a common one — can take on a racial edge.
In mid-February, Flemmings said, a caller told her “the current administration is making cuts,” implying she would soon be laid off.
“I think everyone that’s at Maximus has had some type of issue that should make them want to join [a union],” Flemmings said. “They say they have an open-door policy,” she added, referring to Maximus managers, to derisive snorts from the audience. “Well, how many doors do you see that have been opened for you?”
For Flemmings, the union organizing campaign has been a personal transformation, too.
Although Black workers are more likely to be union members than any other group, Flemmings had never belonged to a union before working at Maximus. Non-union jobs are especially commonplace in Mississippi, a right-to-work state where only 5.2% of workers are members of unions, even less than the low national average of 9.9%.
Flemmings is a graduate of Hattiesburg’s segregated public schools, which did not fully integrate until a 1987 court order required it. She earned a bachelor’s degree before going on to help run an independent living facility and work in early childhood education. When a surprise layoff came in 2016, Flemmings, worried about paying her bills, took the first job she could find, in the local call center then owned by General Dynamics Corp. Her starting wage was $9.05 an hour, she said.
She went to her first union organizing meeting about a year later. Although she stayed quiet at that first meeting, Flemmings soon found herself arguing with management and pushing for a raise after learning that the $9.05 wage was below the $12 minimum wage mandated for federal contract workers. Her willingness to fight led a coworker to dub her “Razor Blade,” she said.
In 2020, said Flemmings, her wage went up to $10.65. The next year, Biden raised the federal contractor minimum wage to $15 per hour. Flemmings credited the union organizing effort as the push that made the company implement higher wages and lower deductibles.
As the union organizing fight enters its eighth year, Flemmings called a union “the best option” for workers. Not only is it a right, she said, but it is also a way to strengthen workers’ position with the company.
“I never thought that I would be doing what I’m doing,” Flemmings said. “When I first started, I wouldn’t speak. And now I don’t shut up.”
