Outside Las Palmas Medical Center on Wednesday, hospital workers held signs and chanted for higher pay, joining a coordinated national day of action against HCA Healthcare, the country's largest for-profit hospital system. Del Sol and Las Palmas employees say they make as little as $13.50 an hour, according to their union, even as the company that owns their hospitals reported billions in profit last year.
Esther Reyes, an environmental services technician at Las Palmas who has worked there for two years, told The Guardian she earns $16.80 an hour and still struggles to cover basic bills like water and gas as a single mother of three. Her account came just ahead of the informational picketing outside the hospital, part of a broader push covered by KFOX, which reported that El Paso healthcare workers joined dozens of hospitals nationwide in the demonstration.
SEIU Texas said El Paso healthcare workers gathered outside Las Palmas Hospital as part of contract negotiations covering more than 22,000 healthcare workers represented by the union across HCA facilities. The union said workers are urging HCA to invest in frontline staff, arguing that insufficient staffing undermines quality patient care across the hospital system. Workers also opposed what organizers describe as profit-driven, top-down decisions they say harm both employees and patients.
What Workers Are Demanding
The list of demands laid out by workers goes well beyond a single wage figure. They are calling for a $25-an-hour minimum wage for all HCA employees, annual wage increases matching the cost of living, and wage scales that reward experience and longevity. Workers also want safe, acuity-based staffing standards informed by frontline employees, guaranteed paid sick days, vacation and holidays, and paid orientation time for new hires.
Beyond pay and staffing, the union says workers are pushing for stronger workplace protections, including the right to bargain over proposed changes during the life of the contract, on-site union meetings, and guaranteed access for union representatives. Together, organizers frame the package as a demand that patient care be prioritized over profits at HCA hospitals, per the union's account relayed through KFOX's reporting.
Corporate Profits Versus Frontline Pay
The wage gap workers are protesting sits against a backdrop of strong corporate financial performance. HCA Healthcare reported $6.8 billion in profit in 2025, a 17.8% increase over the prior year, according to TIKR.com. That same year, HCA's board authorized a $10 billion share buyback program to repurchase roughly 10% of its outstanding stock, as reported by Benzinga, while also raising its quarterly dividend to $0.78 per share.
HCA CEO Sam Hazen received more than $26 million in total compensation in 2025, according to SEIU Texas. A separate analysis from Grand Goldman put that figure at $26.5 million, or roughly 420 times the hospital system's median employee compensation of $62,955. At the same time, HCA has launched a $400 million cost-savings program in 2026 that uses AI tools and shared-services platforms to trim operating expenses, and has moved to offshore around 3,000 non-patient support roles to a capability center in Hyderabad, India, by late 2026, according to the Severance Ledger.
Measuring Wages Against El Paso's Cost of Living
The gap between what workers say they earn and what it costs to live in El Paso is stark by federal and academic measures alike. Healthcare support occupations in the El Paso metro area earned an average of $13.59 an hour, compared to $42.47 for healthcare practitioners and a regional cross-industry average of $24.06, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Texas enforces the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Under the MIT Living Wage Calculator's February 2026 update, a single adult with no children in El Paso needs $18.54 an hour to cover necessities, while a single parent raising three children needs $47.15 an hour, a figure organizers point to when explaining the $25 wage demand. That gap helps explain why workers like Reyes describe struggling to pay for essentials despite full-time hospital employment.
A Hospital System Under Pressure On Multiple Fronts
Las Palmas Del Sol Healthcare operates as HCA's local division in El Paso, comprising the 327-bed Las Palmas Medical Center in West El Paso and the 350-bed Del Sol Medical Center in East El Paso, according to healthcare recruitment platform ENGAGE. The two facilities house the region's only kidney transplant center and East El Paso's only Level II trauma center, anchoring HCA's Central and West Texas Division along the border.
The labor dispute is unfolding alongside a separate commercial fight. Las Palmas Del Sol Healthcare announced this month that it remains far apart from insurer Cigna in contract negotiations, with the current coverage agreement set to expire September 30. The health system said emergency department care will remain available to all patients regardless of insurance status during the standoff.
Staffing pressure is not unique to HCA's El Paso hospitals. A June 2026 report by the Texas Hospital Association estimated that the state's healthcare facilities must hire between 2,100 and 2,700 new workers every month just to keep pace with population growth of nearly 30,000 residents a month, layering a statewide labor shortage on top of the wage dispute playing out at Las Palmas.
Wednesday's picketing in El Paso mirrors similar actions at HCA-owned facilities elsewhere, including a July rally over the Vegas contract standoff at Sunrise Hospital in Nevada, part of the same multi-state bargaining push covering roughly 22,000 SEIU-represented HCA workers across five states, as per Hoodline.
