St. Barnabas Hospital

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

Jun 3, 2010

355 N.L.R.B. 233 (N.L.R.B. 2010)

ST. BARNABAS HOSPITAL
355 NLRB No. 39
233
St. Barnabas Hospital and Committee of Interns and
Residents, Local 1957, SEIU, Petitioner. Case 2–
RC–23356
June 3, 2010
ORDER DENYING REVIEW
BY CHAIRMAN LIEBMAN AND MEMBERS SCHAUMBER
AND BECKER
The National Labor Relations Board, by a three-
member panel, has carefully considered the Employer’s
request for review of the Regional Director’s Decision
and Direction of Election. The Regional Director di-
rected an election among the Employer’s house staff.
The Employer asserts, among other reasons, that the Re-
gional Director should have considered the applicability
of Brown University, 342 NLRB 483 (2004). We deny
review.
In Boston Medical Center, 330 NLRB 152 (1999), the
Board held that medical interns and residents, or house
staff, are statutory employees with a right to organize
under the Act. That decision, which remains the law, is
directly on point. Accordingly, the Employer cannot
meet the stringent requirements of Section 102.67(c) of
our Rules and Regulations governing a grant of review.
We reject the Employer’s argument that our decision
in Brown compels us to reevaluate Boston Medical Cen-
ter. Boston Medical Center has been the law for over a
decade, and no court of appeals has questioned its valid-
ity. Peaceful and fruitful collective bargaining has taken
place between house staffs and hospitals under both Fed-
eral labor law and State collective-bargaining laws.
In Brown, the Board determined that university teach-
ing assistants (TAs) and research assistants (RAs) were
not statutory employees. Yet the Board expressly de-
clined to extend its reasoning in that case to house staffs.
Id. at 483 fn. 4, 487, 490 fn. 25.
The decision in Brown was based on a factual analysis
of what TAs and RAs actually do. It is apparent that the
role of TAs and RAs at universities is different from that
of house staff at medical centers.1 We are not, however,
granting review here, and it is thus not appropriate to
engage in a full-dress examination of those differences or
their significance.
The Employer’s request for review is denied.

MEMBER SCHAUMBER, dissenting.
I would grant review to consider the Employer’s con-
tentions regarding our decision in Brown University, 342
NLRB 483 (2004). The Board in Brown, clearly did not,
as my colleagues allege “decline to extend its reasoning
in that case to house staffs.” Rather, the Board declined
to decide in Brown whether residents and interns are em-
ployees under Section 2(3) of the Act, as that issue was
not before it. The analytical framework articulated by
the Board in Brown clearly does apply here and should
have been analyzed by the Regional Director.

1 For example, house staffs, as the Board found in Boston Medical
Center, work notoriously long hours providing care to patients, often
without the direct supervision of an attending physician; receive annual
compensation (in 1999) of between $34,000 and $44,000; receive paid
vacation and sick, parental, and bereavement leave; are entitled to
health, dental, and life insurance; and are covered by the employing
hospital’s workers compensation policy. Id. at 153–156. The Board
found none of these facts in relation to TAs and RAs in Brown, where it
expressly distinguished Boston Medical Center on the additional
ground that the house staff in the earlier case had already received their
postgraduate degrees while the TAs and RAs in the latter case were still
pursuing such degrees. Id. at 487.