What About the 14th Amendment?

It appears that a someone at a the ThedaCare hospital found that jobs at  Ascension Northeast were better:  Better pay, better benefits, and better work/life balance.

They went to management asking for a counter-offer, and management told them to pound sand, so they left.

Hospital management responded by getting an injunction preventing the better hospital from bringing these people onboard, because making a job better might interfere with senior management bonuses.

Needless to say, the management of ThedaCare are, to quote Douglas Adams, "A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

It was unclear whether a group of former ThedaCare employees would be allowed to start their new jobs at Ascension Northeast Wisconsin Monday after lawyers for both health systems made their first appearance in court Friday morning.

The uncertainty is the latest development in a battle over health care employees that began late Thursday and is now playing out in court. It comes as staff shortages strain health systems nationwide — nearly one in five health care workers have quit their jobs since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ThedaCare requested Thursday that an Outagamie County judge temporarily block seven of its employees who had applied for and accepted jobs at Ascension from beginning work there on Monday until the health system could find replacements for them. 

The employees were part of an 11-member interventional radiology and cardiovascular team, which can perform procedures to stop bleeding in targeted areas during a traumatic injury or restore blood flow to the brain in the case of a stroke. Each of them were employed at-will, meaning they were not under an obligation to stay at ThedaCare for a certain amount of time.

Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis granted ThedaCare's request and held an initial hearing Friday morning. The case will get a longer hearing at 10 a.m. Monday.

In case you are wondering what sort of f%$#ed up judge makes this ruling, see here, here, and here.  He's a trip.

………

In the complaint, lawyers for ThedaCare wrote that Ascension had "shockingly" chosen to "poach" the employees during a stressful time for health care. More COVID-19 patients are hospitalized in the Fox Valley now than at any other time during the pandemic, according to Wisconsin Hospital Association data, and ThedaCare has canceled non-emergency surgeries to make space. 

A Thursday statement from Ascension said the employees were not recruited but instead decided to apply for open job postings. It was Ascension's understanding that ThedaCare had the opportunity to make counter-offers but declined, the statement said. 

………

Muth argued that ThedaCare had weeks to come up with better offers to keep their employees or figure out alternate staffing solutions and instead chose to initiate court action days before the workers were set to start at Ascension, resulting in "a mess of ThedaCare's own making."

In the complaint, ThedaCare attorneys wrote that the organization found out Dec. 21 that four interventional radiology technicians had accepted offers with Ascension, and learned Dec. 29 that two nurses planned to make the same move. On Jan. 7, they learned one additional nurse planned to quit and work at Ascension.

Ascension had offered the employees a better benefits package that ThedaCare did not match, Muth said. 

Timothy Breister, an Appleton resident and one of the seven employees involved in the systems' dispute, submitted a letter to McGinnis Friday before the hearing describing his experience.

One of his colleagues received an offer from Ascension that was attractive "not just in pay but also a better work/life balance," which caused others on his team to apply, Breister wrote.

After approaching ThedaCare with the chance to match the offers they'd been given, Breister wrote that they were told "the long term expense to ThedaCare was not worth the short term cost," and no counter-offer would be made. 

This whole saga has attracted a lot of attention nationwide, and hopefully both ThedaCare and the judge will be receiving some serious scrutiny as a result.

Hopefully this will result in negative consequences.