The only proper role of public safety for some people is the protection of lives and private property [of rich people]
As you might imagine, the health care professionals who hang out in the r/nursing subreddit have had a LOT to say about this situation. That’s the thread about the original pissed off letter from the CEO, and here’s how they’re responding to the injunction.
And my look on it is that the 13th Amendment ought to apply here but as per usual, the Constitution takes a back seat to corporate whims.
I’m not a lawyer, but I dealt with a lot of contract issues in my career. Unless there is an employer-employee contract that states that an employee can’t quit until there is a replacement, it falls under the heading of “tough shit” for the employer. The longest “notice” clause I’ve ever seen was two weeks, and employers rarely hold an employee to that. As mentioned above, if there is some sort of non-compete clause I could see where the company might have a case, but otherwise the employer’s problem does NOT mean that it is the employees’ emergency. But the bottom line is “at-will employment” means that an employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without incurring legal liability. Likewise, an employee is free to leave a job at any time for any or no reason with no adverse legal consequences. I see a “sick-out” in the future.
And yeah, this is what happens when we allow union-busting.
I’m imagining a rural hospital, which caters to the poor and downtrodden, and which attracts practitioners who take their role as helpers seriously (even if it means that their wealth has taken a hit), being dragged through the mud because an entire division decided to quit all at once and go to a private facility with better hours and more pay.
Do you know their financials? Do you know that they can afford to pay more?
Just because they are in “control of the money” doesn’t mean that they have an infinite amount of it.
Let’s say that ThedaCare shuts down, and Ascension is now the only stroke trauma center in town. They don’t take MediCare, and they only operate Monday to Friday 9-5. They also don’t take more advanced cases, as they used to transfer them to ThedaCare rather than deal with them themselves.
The community suffers, a few employees make a couple extra bucks, and the employers at Ascension, and everyone in this thread seems to agree that anyone who signs a paycheck is an evil greedy bastard, are the only ones who really profit.
They’ve made it clear that they are unable to match what a competitor is currently offering to poach their employees. They’ve also gone to court to try to ensure that their patients continue to receive the care that they need to not die.
Or, once Ascension has staffed itself, and starts cutting hours and benefits, as all these evil employers tend to do, people will start to realize that the grass really isn’t all that much greener on this side.
The hate towards employers shown in this thread is amusing, as it convenient when directed towards one, but completely ignored in the fawning over the other.
Anyway, your statement is probably not true, as the reason for granting this injunction was because the judge felt that corporeal people were more important than a pissing contest between two corporations. I don’t see any evidence that this injunction was not put in place in order to protect lives, even if that comes at a cost to the profits of Ascension.
How would the 13th Amendment apply? They are not being forced to work.
And tough shit to the patients who will no longer be receiving care.
They are free to.
That’s the impression that I got, and it saddens me that people in this thread so quickly jump to hatred of employers that they come to the defense of the private facility over the rural hospital that is being driven out of business by the wealthier corporation that can afford to come in and poach the employees. When the community no longer has an affordable health center, and instead has a profit taking center that caters to the well to do and leaves the rest either sick or bankrupt, they won’t even acknowledge that they are talking out of both sides of their mouth as they criticize the practices of the corporation they so recently were lauding.
True enough, but if the company paid decent wages and benefits to their employees, the problem wouldn’t exist, so laying blame on the employees just doesn’t wash for me.
Perhaps. The perils of the free market system we live in. I was once poached from a decent job for twice the pay, then found myself job hunting six months later. I knew the risks and took them.
If that’s what the judge is going for, then it’s simple robbery of Ascension by ThedaCare. Ascension has done nothing wrong here, and yet, they’re being required to pay for work that ThedaCare, not them, is benefitting from?
If they can’t afford to pay their employees to do the work that they do, then there’s a problem somewhere. But the solution is not to force their employees to work for less pay than other employers are offering.
An employer is someone who’s willing to pay employees to do something. There’s only one of those in this discussion, and nobody but you is hating on them.
And this injunction doesn’t protect any lives. It doesn’t do anything at all for ThedaCare patients, it imperils the livelihood of the employees, and it endangers the lives of Ascension patients.
All people are doing is looking at the situation. Only one side is trying to get the courts involved rather than pay their workers more. And not because of some claim they don’t have the money, either. They just declined to pay higher wages, but then sought to use the courts to prevent those employees from leaving, waiting right up until the point where they actually tried to leave rather than doing it as soon as they were notified.
These people may not be legally required to keep working for the local hospital. But, from a practical standpoint, that is their only choice. You can’t just walk in and get a job somewhere. They either have to keep working at that hospital or no longer get paid. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t legally required to do so. It still has the same effect: they must work for the first hospital or not be employed.
The saving grace is only that the final decision will be made quickly. That’s better than nothing. But I question the irreparable harm that would have happened if the judge had just waited until Monday to decide.
And irreparable harm is supposed to be the reason you grand temporary injunctions or restraining orders.
Unless you’re a high level executive or someone with extremely specialized proprietary knowledge, a non-compete clause isn’t usually worth the paper its printed on in most states. In Wisconsin, non-competes are only enforceable if it’s necessary to protect the employer, reasonable in geographic scope, and reasonable in time. For this to be a valid ruling based on a non-compete clause, the original employer would have to demonstrate how the non-compete clause is necessary to protect them.
And “protecting the employer” generally doesn’t have a very broad definition. If a truck driver for Coca-Cola jumps ship and goes to drive a truck for PepsiCo because they’re paying him $3.50 more an hour most courts are going to laugh at anyone who tried to enforce a non-compete agreement.
Which is a fairly common practice especially in health care. And there’s a lot of that going around. Prior to COVID, I was rarely contacted by headhunters looking to fill HR positions but these days I hear from them almost weekly. And many of them must be desperate because they’re contacting me about positions my LinkedIN profile doesn’t say I’m qualified for.
Bingo. The employer made the decision that they weren’t going to offer a salary bump. That was a business decision and the court shouldn’t be in the business of protecting an employer from making a bad decision.
“Right to work” refers to states that allows workers to choice of whether or not they want to join the union. i.e. If you hire someone to work at a place that has a union you can’t require union membership as a condition of employment or continued employment in a right to work state. An “at will” state means that both the employer and employee are free to terminate the employment relationship at any time without legal consequences. (The employer can’t terminate employment if they do so based on membership in a protected class of course.)
I feel like I’m a broken record, but the judge hasn’t “gone for” anything yet. A hearing where all sides are going to make their arguments is set for Monday. These people were supposed to start on Friday. The judge has only said, “there’s an allegation of substantial harm, so let’s not disrupt anything just yet.”
We don’t have the benefit of the complaint, but they are alleged to have done something wrong here. It explains why the new employees keep saying that they were not all recruited together by Ascension- clearly, the allegations track back to some claim that Ascension raided ThedaCare. Now, I don’t claim to know how that translates into a lawsuit (tortious interference with a business relationship, I guess), but there is some assertion of wrongdoing.
Whether true or not, there is at least an assertion that it does protect patients. That’s the basis of the imminent harm justifying a temporary injunction followed by a hearing and a final ruling on the merits.
Well, I’ve worked at 24 hour hospitals that were not for profit and morale was rated higher than at this one.
In 2020 their leadership team undertook a 40% pay cut. It was estimated to save ThedaCare 40 million dollars. The leadership team went from making a combined 100 million a year to 60 million and put out a press release about how great they are and the sacrifices they are making during covid.
If you read the article the judge is not and can not force them to keep working at their old jobs, just that they can’t start new jobs until replaced… which of course will be never.
However the injunction was a short term one.
Is the fault with the Union or the government giving them crappy pay and benefits, etc? Since other teachers unions are not going out on strike everywhere (it does happen, but it is rare)my guess would be the fault lies with the government, not the Union.
Are you reading the thread?
Right to Work is basically Union Busting. The non-unions employees get all the benefits of collective bargaining, but do not have to pay the Union which gets them. If you look at a map of Right to Work states and overlay that with Red states, the match up is close.
The judge didn’t issue any orders controlling the conduct of the employees, but rather the employer.
And the injunction is asking for a delay of 90 days; it is not indefinite. Presumably, the judge will let us know whether he agrees on Monday.
I find that order odd. What is the allegation of harm to Theda? Since it doesn’t prevent the employeess from leaving, it can’t be that losing those employees is per se a harm to Theda. The harm is that the employees might go to the competitor. But either way, if the employees all just quit, or the employees are hired by the competitor, the net effect on Theda’s operations will be exactly the same.
How is Theda harmed by the competitor hiring, but not harmed by the employees just quitting? There’s no difference in the impact on Theda’s patients.
The claimed harm appears to be that they lose their accreditation, which require patients to divert to medical facilities that are hours away.
But that happens if all the employees in question quit today, right? It’s the loss of employees that affects their accreditation, not that they’re going to a competitor.
The employees will be harmed because a form of leverage has been taken from them. Now ThedaCare can continue to mistreat and underpay workers without worrying they’ll all take off and collapse their business model. Being able to walk away as a group and collapse a business is the most important form of leverage an employee has.
Yes, I believe that you are correct.
Which is why it will be interesting to see how this case ultimately concludes. I can see a facility scrambling to overcome the fact that it just had a bunch of key employees all walk out en masse when they just need a few more weeks to handle the huge turnover, and I can see a poorly run hospital whining because it is overworking and underpaying its staff. I freely acknowledge that I don’t know what is underlying this case.
Additionally, and as long as I’m speculating, I can imagine a judge signing off on a temporary injunction with a skeptical eye toward the ultimate merits of the case.
Judge: “I hear that you are telling me that patients might die if they have to fly hours away to another hospital, but how is that Ascension’s fault?”
Lawyer: “Your honor, we intend to show that they tortuously interfered with the employment status of these critical employees through a concerted solicitation effort, as evidenced by the fact that they all are changing jobs on the same date.”
“Counselor, this is an at will state. Do these people have employment contracts?”
“No, your honor. But judge, we will show that this was a coordinated campaign of solicitation with full knowledge that it would imperil the good standing of my client.”
“Here’s what I’m going to do. Since you are telling me that there are patients who might die, I’m going to sign this temporary. But you better bring me more than the fact that it is hurting your client’s accreditation, or that these people all decided to go to the same new job, if you want the final. People can work where they want.
In fact, I don’t want to sit on this. If I clear my calendar Monday, can everybody get in here to finish this? The law requires both sides to have a meaningful chance to be heard, so you’ve got the entire afternoon. But then I’m making my ruling.”
That would be fair given the information that we have.