Doctors working to form a union at Cleveland-based University Hospitals said their group has grown to more than 1,000 employees, even after two of its leaders were terminated last month.
While less than 10% of U.S. doctors are unionized, recent trends show an increase in the number of union drives. According to estimates by the UH doctors, a union there could be one of the largest physician unions in the country.
Pediatrician Dr. Lauren Beene said a number of UH doctors believe a labor union is necessary to advocate for better patient care and working conditions.
“In the corporate environment that we currently live in, in which all of the power is held by people who are so far removed from the people at the bottom, who are so busy and have no way to make changes that are necessary for patient care, that's when people are gonna get hurt," she said.
But the effort faced a setback last month when Beene and Dr. Valerie Fouts-Fowler, another UH pediatrician, were fired after they accessed an internal directory to contact UH employees to discuss joining the union.
They claim the firing was illegal, as their actions were protected under the National Labor Relations Act.
University Hospitals said it was right to terminate the doctors for improperly using company technology, and that the decision had nothing to do with union organizing.
The new corporate boss
The number of UH doctors interested in joining a union with the Doctors Council of SEIU has been steadily increasing since some of them started discussing shared concerns in May of last year, Beene said.
All of the doctors she spoke with had the same refrain: their leaders weren't addressing concerns they'd raised about how changes could have a negative impact on patients.
By then, they'd begun to see colleagues leave for neighboring providers, or quitting medicine, she said, adding that doctors are starting to bristle at their lack of autonomy.
Today, the majority of doctors are employed by large hospital systems rather than private practices. The American Medical Association reported in June that the number of doctors who work in private practices dropped from 60.1% to 42.2% between 2012 and 2024.
“That (change) happened so rapidly that in that process, there weren't any ways to safeguard (physicians') voices, to make sure that we could find ways to advocate for our patients effectively," Beene said.
UH Vice President of Communications Mike Tobin said in an emailed statement to Ideastream that UH responds to its physicians' concerns, and emphasized that Beene and Fouts-Fowler were offered opportunities to meet with leadership.
"There is not one issue that UH leaders ducked, ignored, or did not seek to address with each physician involved," he said in a statement. "Many other physicians raise concerns that are addressed daily."
How patients might benefit
Fouts-Fowler said a union might address concerns such as ensuring there's adequate staffing of doctors, nurses and technicians in emergency rooms, and making sure doctors are not booked back-to-back with procedures while a patient waits eight hours in the ER to see them.
"(Our worry) always was just we can't provide for our patients the way we want to, and that's unacceptable," she said.
Both Beene and Fouts-Fowler said they are still working with other UH doctors to form a union while also trying to get their jobs back. They both said they have not begun a search for other jobs.
Meanwhile, they said community members are still circulating a petition with more than 6,000 signatures asking UH to reinstate the pediatricians.
A group of their supporters plans to picket outside of the UH main campus in Cleveland on the evening of July 30.
