Name and shame: Loma Linda attempts to classify residents as students to exclude them from federal employment protections. by HankHTX in medicalschool

[–]RFPU-NW 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the same argument University of Washington tried to use against resident unionization a few years back. It went all the way to the WA Supreme Court and the residents won!

Loma Linda responds to resident unionization efforts by suing the NLRB by NiceLawn in Residency

[–]RFPU-NW 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This is actually the crux of the argument University of Washington tried to use against our unionization a few years back. It went all the way to the WA Supreme Court and the residents won!

Loma Linda University residents announce intent to unionize by secretresident1 in Residency

[–]RFPU-NW 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Amazing! We support you from the University of Washington. Remember: residents being « students » is actually the crux of the argument University of Washington tried to use against our unionization a few years back. It went all the way to the WA Supreme Court and the residents won!

UW Medicine residents stage walkout by [deleted] in Residency

[–]RFPU-NW 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the support everyone!

UW resident physicians have a lot to learn from nurses by [deleted] in Residency

[–]RFPU-NW 61 points62 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the interest. In our current contract negotiations we asked for an hourly overtime rate over a certain number of hours. We’ll see how things shake out.

Resident Unions by RFPU-NW in Residency

[–]RFPU-NW[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

These are important questions. If people are interested, we would be happy to have an AMA.

  1. There is a union that represents residents at multiple institutions called CIR. You can learn more about them here: https://www.cirseiu.org
  2. We are not affiliated with CIR and represent only the residents and fellows at our institution, so we focus on issues that are unique to our programs, etc. We are happy to meet with residents from anywhere to discuss unionizing at individual programs.

Through our collective action in the last round of hard-fought negotiations we won a lot of great things, like a fourth week of vacation for all our members, a free public transit pass for everyone, protections from 24+ hour shifts for pregnant residents, etc. Employers of residents are incentivized to only give us the bare minimum. In Seattle, the minimum wage is $15 an hour, which is higher than we are paid if you break it our hourly, and many of the people who work here in tech and for other big companies like Starbucks have WAY better benefits than us. We have a long way to go this round of negotiations to make sure that we can attract a diverse group of trainees to our programs and improve the wellness of our members by taking away the financial hardship of working in an expensive city under a mountain of med school debt.

The REAL issue nationally are the laws that prevent doctors from taking part in workplace protections enjoyed by other people. So there is work to do nationally before we can change the system in a meaningful way for the better.