UPDATE: Maximus just announced another round of layoffs the Friday before Mother’s Day. While it appears Maximus is going to offer severance this time, we have no information on how much to plan our lives.

Dear Secretary Becerra,

We are federally-contracted workers who answer phone calls for the Affordable Care Act Federal Marketplace and 1-800-Medicare. Since November, we have worked non-stop to connect our fellow Americans with affordable health plans during a record-breaking open enrollment period in which 16 million people enrolled in ACA coverage plans, a 13 percent increase over last year. We do this work because we know it is important. We believe that everyone deserves access to affordable healthcare, and that our fellow citizens deserve caring, well-informed and professional help as they navigate a complicated system.

However, this record-breaking performance came at great cost - we worked overtime and mandatory days on evenings, weekends and holidays, we sacrificed family obligations and even our own health. Our employer, Maximus, continues to pay many of us the bare minimum allowed under President Biden’s recent executive orders, meaning that we may make only $16.20 per hour during a period of high costs, as compared to federal workers who do similar work at $25 per hour or more. Our health insurance continues to be very expensive, with a $2,000 deductible that prevents some of us from seeking the medical care that we need. In November, nearly five hundred of us went on strike to draw attention to the fact that we have no real protections from abusive callers who use sexist and racist language, and that we work in a high pressure environment with no breathing room in between calls to make notes or to prepare for the next caller. To our knowledge, Maximus has made no meaningful effort to address these concerns.

As we were celebrating a record-breaking open enrollment period, Maximus decided to lay off more than a hundred of our co-workers with less than two weeks notice and no severance. These are people with families, children and bills to pay. How is it acceptable to treat them this way after they’ve worked so hard? Maximus then proceeded to force many of us to work over Martin Luther King day weekend, a time meant to celebrate the legacy of a man who stood for racial and economic justice, and against the exploitation of workers like us by major corporations like Maximus.

We are deeply disappointed in our employer’s behavior, and we are outraged that we and our co-workers continue to be treated as if we are disposable, when we know that we are the backbone of the Affordable Care Act and Medicare, systems that would not work without us.

On behalf of the American people who count on you to ensure that the services we provide are available and high-quality, we call on you to:

1. Investigate Maximus’ labor practices to determine whether they are consistent with its obligations as a federal contractor.

2. Tell Maximus to rehire our laid-off coworkers or provide them with the two months of severance that they deserve.

3. Commit to raising pay for HHS, CMS and CDC-contracted call center workers to $25 per hour.