Ahh. Too bad it wasn’t live. I’d love to watch.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes for most of the day. The judge will want to hear full arguments from both sides. If the judge is inclined to rule today, will want to take some time to draft the order.
If there was a like button, then I would like your response. 
I can’t speak for that courthouse, but in my experience such a long hearing would be a very rare occurrence. Judge’s calendars are full. . In court’s I’ve been in, the judge would set aside an hour for this at most. Many important motions are decided with 10 or 30 minutes of argument. (in Federal Court these days, most civil motions are decided without oral argument)
If things aren’t settled today it will be interesting to see how it plays out. On one of the nursing boards there is discussion of setting up a Go Fund Me to raise money to compensate nurses who do not go in to work at the involved ThedaCare.
Thats what I’ve heard. There was another thread on another forum, and it seemed to be a common concept that Ascension isn’t a very good company to work for, so the fact that an entire department left ThedaCare to join them implies Theda is even worse. Then you have the fact that instead of improving wages, benefits, working conditions, staffing levels, etc. ThedaCare used guilt trips and legal injunctions to try to force their employees to stay against their will, its going to affect their appeal as an employer.
Yeah, making the national news as such a shitty employer that you resort to the courts to try to prevent a staffing crisis can’t be good for them.
Here’s a detail I think we missed (bolding mine):
From here:
How is that different (legally speaking) than convincing a group of valued customers to move from company A to company B, by offering them lower than market rates, to damage company B?
Here’s the thing with ThedaCare’s “but they’re critical employees” for patient health that other are agreeing with. If they were so critical, then maybe they shouldn’t not have been on “at-will” contracts. Maybe ThedaCare should have had them on “90-day notice” to quit or be fired. ThedaCare, and other employers, want to benefit from at-will but not suffer from at-will, and that’s not right. You cannot have your at-will cake and eat it too.
(warning: MPSIMS): I wasn’t born at “St Ease”, but some of my siblings were. It was where I had my adenoidectomy, tubes put in/removed from ears, and had my broken arm set.
Brian
I don’t know a ton about this area of law, but I’m pretty sure that what’s actionable is if you are acting to harm your competitor and not to directly benefit your own company. By definition, market rates are competitive, and include a range. If you specifically target an entire unit and offer higher than market rates to all of them to induce them to all quit en mass and thereby damage your competitor, I’m pretty sure that that states a claim.
Again, I’m not saying that Ascension actually did that, I’m just explaining that that might be actionable as an unfair business practice, or interference with business relations, or something similar.
I think the customer example is harder, because gaining customers does benefit a company, so cutting a sweet deal to get them initially is a common practice. A comparable thing involving customers might be luring a competitors customers away with below cost prices to put the competitor out of business, and then discontinuing the service you lured them away with – so the whole point wast to gain those customers but to harm the competition.
IANAL, but I owned a business.
A classic example of tortious interference would be the store that sold widgets, gizmos and doodads. The WGD Store has an established client vendor relationships with both Joe’s Widget and Gizmo Factory and Bob’s Doodad Factory.
Then Joe’s Widget and Gizmo Factory decides to start manufacturing doodads. But The WGD Store is very happy with Bob’s doodads and doesn’t want to make any changes to their supply chain, even after Joe offers some doodad discounts
So, since the carrot was rejected, Joe’s Widget and Gizmo Factory reaches for the stick and refuses to sell The WGD Store any more widgets or gizmos unless they also get their doodad business.
That would be good cause for a tortious interference claim by Bobs Doodads against Joe’s Widget and Gizmo factory.
But it’s a high bar. Getting the WGD stores doodad business by offering up price incentives, a better product or a pretty sales rep with an expense account isn’t tortious interference, it’s salesmanship.
It probably sucks to be Bob in any case. But Joe still has to stick to carrots, he can’t use sticks.
That’s probably really oversimplified, but it’s typical of the tortious interference rules I’m familiar with. I’m having trouble thinking of a good example that would involve employees. Now if Ascension was trying to start a competing stroke management center and they offered to pay all ThedaCare’s employees a full salary even though they didn’t have actual work for them until they after drove ThedaCare out of business, that would be tortious interference. Of course, that’s not what’s happening here.
It’s almost like the judge crafted a very temporary solution that addresses the possibility for patient harm alleged by ThedaCare in a way that minimizes impacts on Ascension and the employees, while he gets more information to weigh a longer-term resolution.
Or it’s an even more insidious plan than we originally imagined by our evil capitalist overlords to indenture workers in eternal bondage. Probably the later.
How does “delay hiring the group” have minimal impact on the employees? They have to continue working at a lower wage, against their will.
Isn’t this a PI hearing? Those often involve the taking of live testimony because there’s an evidentiary burden on things like irreparable harm. I’ve sat in PI hearings that have gone 10-12 hours.
nevermind.
Because (as I’m reading the latest reporting) the order gave Ascension the option to put them all to work immediately, but two of them would have to be on call to be available to ThedaCare should they be needed. Presumably they would be employed by Ascension and paid Ascension wages.
But I really shouldn’t have jumped the gun in making any assumption given the paucity of facts in this debate already. Mea culpa.
Looks like they’ll be hearing testimony from employees at this hearing. Should be spicy.
Here’s the r/nursing thread–people gone have a lot to say about this I expect.
Right, but if Ascension didn’t do that, it couldn’t hire them at all, so they would have to stay at Theda at lower wages, or quit their job. That doesn’t sound like minimal impact to me.