Hospital groups urge court to overturn NLRB decision

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia should overturn a National Labor Relations Board decision permitting an incumbent union at a hospital to organize only a small portion of the bargaining unit’s unrepresented non-professional employees, the AHA and Federation of American Hospitals said in a friend-of-the-court brief filed yesterday. The decision casts “long-standing principles aside,” permitting piecemeal organization that subjects hospitals to “serial organizing and bargaining, and all of the attendant disruption that brings,” the brief states. “The result – which the Board failed to adequately explain – is contrary to the [Board’s Health Care Bargaining Rule], the policies underlying the Rule, and precedent.” Previously, the Board has consistently held that an incumbent union wishing to represent more hospital employees in one of eight collective bargaining units designated under the Rule must represent all residual employees who would otherwise belong in that unit, the brief notes. The case is Rush University Medical Center v. National Labor Relation Board.