How do we really know OUR interests will be represented?
- Our union is led by housestaff – not CIR staff. The union organizing effort at Stanford was initiated by housestaff and led by housestaff (find us on the big purple posters in the workrooms!)
- Residents/fellows will nominate housestaff representatives to be leaders of our union and decide collectively on our priorities. CIR simply provides the back-end infrastructure with contract organizers, PR, and legal team to help us implement our vision – busy clinical residents often do not have the bandwidth to handle all of this ourselves.
- We need strong representation from every department to make sure all of our interests are represented – if you are interested in representing your department, contact us!
Why didn’t we form an independent union?
- This is something we discussed early on – ultimately, we felt it would be better to have the expertise of CIR (who represent > 20,000 residents nationwide and helped UCSF, UCLA, etc. organize in recent years), as none of us had ever organized a union before. Additionally, organizing at a private institution like Stanford is more complex than at a public institution. CIR has put field organizers on our campaign and additionally has existing structures for legal consultation and communications.