Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio Employees Want Leadership to Take Pay Cuts to Avoid Layoffs, Staff Salary Reductions

A sign posted on the former Planned Parenthood in Midtown blamed the Trump administration for its closure in June. Credit: Mark Oprea

A union representing Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio employees is pushing back against layoffs proposed earlier this month meant to keep the reproductive care mainstay afloat after cuts in President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill.

Workers backed by the local arm of the Office and Professional Employees International Union want nine C-suite executives at Ohio’s Planned Parenthood branch to cut their own pay by a quarter, the union said in a press release on Thursday, to save other jobs.

The request comes after the union met for a third time on Wednesday with PPGOH to try and handle fallout from about $10 million in federal funding cuts affecting 12 Ohio locations.

In June, Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Midtown shut its doors due to those funding freezes. And a month later, in July, two more Ohio clinics, in Springfield and Hamilton, closed as well.

More somber news followed. Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio would be forced to, the organization said, reduce their workforce through layoffs due to Trump. Other staffers would be forced to take salary cuts.

The union asked, in the aftermath, why leadership didn’t take their own salary cuts.

Leadership told Scene the math doesn’t work out.

“The impacts of a total $10 million funding loss unfortunately cannot be solved entirely through cutting executive compensation,” Erica Wilson-Domer, president of PPGOH, told Scene in a statement.

“Even with the reduction in force, PPGOH will continue to offer all of the services it currently does at our health centers,” she said. “This reduction does not include any health center closures.”

Though it’s unclear exactly how many employees will be cut from the dozen remaining clinics and surgical centers, the pay drop for clinic workers that decide to stay could lead an overall drop in quality.

Bee Grubbs, a patient navigator who helps with patient intake in one of Planned Parenthood’s Columbus clinics, worries that her own drop in salary—from $52,600 a year to $37,800—will lead to a kind of demotion of trained care in a line of work that’s already sensitive.

As proposed to her, and others, in bargaining talks this month, Grubbs’ role in patient navigation would blend with two other departments, customer contact and centralized followup, into a newly-created Patient Access and Support Department, where new hires would make about $18 an hour.

Not exactly what she feels her bachelor’s degree amounts to.

“I in good faith don’t expect someone to stay and take a $15,000 pay cut,” Grubbs, 23, told Scene. “I mean, a 20-percent pay cut means I can’t pay my mortgage. For them? I don’t know.”

Brian Pearson, the head of North Shore branch of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, told Scene it’s “disappointing” to have to witness a back-and-forth fight over pay cuts and layoffs, specifically for an organization rife with employees passionate about reproductive rights in general.

Pearson, whose organization oversees the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 98, which is bargaining on PPGOH employees’ behalf, frames the current impasse between PPGOH and its unionized workers as part of a growing trend.

“It’s this common theme of workers, even those that are unionized, not having a seat at the table,” Pearson said. “And I’m definitely fed up about it.”

No Planned Parenthood leaders, including Wilson-Domer, have agreed to take any pay cuts as of Thursday. Wilson-Domer’s predecessor made roughly $318,000 a year, according to a 2023 tax filing.

About $2 million in “director-level and above” spending was however cut, PPGOH said in a statement, “in an effort to reduce overall costs” concerning patient care.