Dear Housestaff,
On behalf of our resident and fellow organizing committee, we wanted to be the first to let you know that, earlier today, we petitioned Stanford Health Care for voluntary recognition of a housestaff union! We have supermajority support from all housestaff, and our numbers are growing every day. CONGRATULATIONS to all of the supporters who have helped get this effort underway!
It’s our hope that Stanford Health Care will see the overwhelming support from the housestaff and recognize our union. However, if past housestaff union efforts are an indication of what’s to come, we fully expect that the administration will reject this request and carry out a protracted debate before we can have an election to vote for unionization.
So what comes next?
- Anticipated timeline:
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- Feb 22 (today): Petition Stanford Health Care for voluntary recognition of union
- Feb 24 (anticipating rejection): File with National Labor Relations Board for recognition of union
- Feb – Mar: Ongoing debate with Stanford Health Care around logistics of election
- How Stanford will respond: We anticipate that there will be strong anti-union messaging from the administration in the months to come. This kind of messaging has been consistently seen not only against housestaff unions but unions in all industries across the country. In fact, this type of anti-union messaging is so predictable that we’ve put together a Union Busting Bingo Card so that you can keep track of just how we expect the administration to respond. There are also mythbusting responses to each of the anti-union messaging points that are expected. Play along, and there will be prizes for the winners! (But actually, there will be prizes.)
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- Events: Between now and our anticipated election day, there will be several events to grab some snacks, meet your organizing committee, and learn more about the union. We’ll also be hosting events with other healthcare worker unions at Stanford, like CRONA (the nursing union, who are in full support of our efforts). We’ll keep an updated list of events on our getting involved page (link below). This week we’ll have a virtual meet & greet Wednesday and will be tabling with CRONA on Friday morning.
- Getting involved: If you’d like to get more involved in the organizing work, please let us know! Fill out this 1-minute form so that we can get you plugged in with the organizing team. Have other questions? Check out our Residency Union FAQ. Want to spread the word? Share this message and its links with your coresidents and cofellows! Got this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up to receive updates directly.
We’ll be sending out additional information in the coming days. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to us with any questions, comments, or words of encouragement.
In solidarity,
The Stanford Housestaff Union Organizing Committee
StanfordHousestaffUnion@gmail.com
(email sent to housestaff 2/22/2022)