A bizarre Wisconsin hospital lawsuit shows how Covid-19 gave workers new leverage

[Jilly_in_VA]

The staffing crisis in health care reached a farcical extreme last week when ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin, filed for a temporary restraining order to block a number of its employees from leaving their jobs and moving to another nearby hospital.

The hospital argued that, because the pandemic had created a shortage of health care workers, it needed the court to block the employees from leaving at least until it was able to come up with a staffing plan.

As medical workers burn out, isolate due to Covid-19, and leave for other professions, the ensuing staffing shortage has gotten so severe that ThedaCare turned to the courts to try to fix it. It was a striking example of how the pandemic has turned the health care labor market upside down, putting nurses and doctors in higher demand than ever even as they must face the most grueling working conditions of their careers.

The workers and the hospital that hired them, Ascension Northeast Wisconsin, countered that ThedaCare could have matched the offers made by Ascension, but didn’t. By declining to match and then failing to come up with a plan before the workers were to set to leave, they argued ThedaCare was attempting to punish the workers for its own shortsightedness.

https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/22906266/thedacare-ascension-lawsuit-covid-nurses-shortage
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I once worked for a home health agency that tried that gambit. Didn't work for them either.

[tanyev]

1. Companies want at will employees, but they only want it to go one way.

[sarcasmo]

2. No quitting so you can earn more money, cause we're gonna file a lawsuit. This country is crazy!

[Freddie]

3. At will employment

Not only means they can fire you without cause, you can quit at any time and there’s not a thing they can do about it.

[halfulglas]

4. I explain to a friend about this.

Not this particular case, but others, who was buying that "workers don't want to work" crap. She didn't know that fire at will state and the fear of that with no job ready to go to had held people at jobs for poor wages and working conditions and now turnabout is certainly fair, that mostly companies don't want to pay people what they are worth and now they are getting a little of their own. She was impressed. This was a nice quiet discussion.

Unfortunately although this works one on one, if you are at a group like a family reunion or other larger gathering, the louder opinionated people (who claim to "know" from experience) proclaiming their views that people just don't want to work seemed intent on making their point and I keep my mouth shut then.

Too many people still think corporations should make as much as much as they want and then moan if the labor walks. It seems in the past 35 years I've heard "you're lucky to have a job" so many times. I've also heard "if you need more money, get a second job." We shouldn't have to have second jobs and sometimes third jobs in order to raise a family because they have the unfortunate habit of eating.