150 doctors went on strike at Allina Health:
Nurse strikes constantly make news due to their plentiful nature, but doctor strikes remain rare. On that note, the American College of Physicians Ethics Manual states, “Physicians should not engage in strikes, work stoppages, slowdowns, boycotts [that could] limit or deny services to patients that would otherwise be available.”
That ethical tenet didn’t stop a 2023 resident strike in New York, nor did it halt this week’s walkout in Minnesota, where 150 Allina Health doctors went on strike at Mercy Hospital for four days, a year after holding informational pickets between appointments.
In 2024, these doctors unionized with Doctors Council-SEIU while expressing concerns about post-COVID staffing and other stressors. They’re also concerned about Allina’s upcoming merger with Sutter Health. However, Allina has stressed that no cancellations on appointments occurred, and only around 10% of Mercy physicians are unionized with Doctor’s Council-SEIU.
More at Allina: This month 60 hospice nurses went on strike for seven days over wages.
Gallup poll: more bipartisan support for unions?
A new Gallup poll suggests that “a majority of Republicans” (that would be 52%) who responded believe that unions should have more influence. That number compares to 70% of Independents and 89% of Democrats, and that latter figure is no shock, since progressive politicians generally hold a more favorable view towards Big Labor.
Does this point toward a trend? Not really, because 52% is barely a majority, but as Gallup points out, this is only the second time that the number has been that high in a quarter of a century. At the same time, the U.S. is also seeing a bipartisan group of lawmakers pushing the Teamsters-promoted Faster Labor Contracts Act, which will be bad for workers and employers by forcing first contracts despite their complexity.
Let’s just say that the above percentages aren’t anything to write home about, but as with lawmakers, party lines don’t always dictate who’s susceptible to union messaging.
The National Right to Work (NRTW) Foundation takes on dues shenanigans:
When a handful of workers recently resigned their membership with two unions, they were dismayed to find that the unions kept deducting dues from their paychecks. The NRTW Foundation is now providing legal support to those employees, located in Louisiana and Washington, in their push to overturn the 1979 NLRB decision that makes it possible for union officials to keep raking in dues on an expired contract, even if a current contract isn’t in sight.
The Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) and United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) were relying upon the Board’s Frito-Lay, Inc. decision, which allows unions to deny workers the ability to revoke dues authorization outside a narrow “window period” within the union’s discretion. The plaintiffs who are being represented by the NRTW Foundation now want Frito-Lay, Inc. reevaluated.
It’s an interesting case for several reasons, including how unions have less incentive to bargain in good faith for new contracts if they know that they won’t lose dues money when they stall. We’ll be watching for further developments.
The Supreme Court denied a pause on Thryv remedies again:
The Supreme Court has denied multiple employers seeking injunctive relief from the Abruzzo Board’s Thryv make-whole remedies. This week brought a similar result.
In Vermont Information Processing LLC v. NLRB, a software company asked the Supreme Court to freeze the Board’s Thryv order, which had been affirmed by the D.C. Circuit, but that request was denied. This follows the high court denying certiorari in Macy’s Inc. v. NLRB, so the Ninth Circuit’s enforcement of make-whole remedies remains intact. That also leaves a circuit split on Thryv unresolved.
Meanwhile, NLRB General Counsel Crystal Carey has put Thryv on her list of decisions that she’d like to see overturned, so hopefully, those remedies will one day be a thing of the past.
A UAW strike at Bradford White:
In Michigan, workers at water heater manufacturer Bradford White Corporation have been working under an expired UAW contract since Sept. 1, and this week, 1,200 workers went on strike. Local 1002 President Jessica Vazquez declared, “We’ll be out here as long as we need to,” and the union seeks higher wages and better retirement benefits.
This is the first strike at Bradford White since 1978, and Shawn Fain visited the picket line. He’s also up for reelection and under grand jury scrutiny. What a busy guy!
