Company uses court to stop people from leaving

APPLETON - 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.

McGinnis told lawyers for both health systems they should try to work out a temporary agreement by the end of the day Friday about the employees' status until Monday's hearing.

Otherwise, he said, the order prohibiting them from going to work at Ascension would be final until a further ruling was made. That means the seven health care workers would not be working at either hospital on Monday.

"To me, that is a poor result for everyone involved," McGinnis said.

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.

RELATED: ThedaCare asks court to temporarily stop 7 stroke, trauma employees from moving to Ascension

RELATED: ThedaCare defers non-urgent, elective surgeries amid staffing shortages and rising COVID-19 cases

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.

Attorney Sean Bosack, who represented ThedaCare Friday, argued that losing the majority of these employees poses a health threat to the region because the health system's Neenah hospital is a hub for high-level stroke care and care for patients with traumatic injuries.

ThedaCare-Neenah is a Level II Trauma Center, part of which means they have specialists like interventional radiologists available regularly to treat patients. Ascension St. Elizabeth Hospital, a Level III Trauma Center, can provide initial support to trauma patients and is able to transfer them to ThedaCare-Neenah for more care, according to definitions from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

ThedaCare's Neenah facility is also a Comprehensive Stroke Center, which also means having specialists available regularly. Ascension St. Elizabeth is a Primary Stroke Center, a designation which does not stipulate having those staff available around the clock.

In the time it takes to divert a local patient in need of emergency care for a stroke or trauma to another similarly certified hospital, Bosack said, the patient could die.

Attorney David Muth, who represented Ascension Friday, said their hospital was capable of caring for such patients in the event that it was necessary even though they are not designated at the same level as ThedaCare.

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.

TL;DR: Company ThedaCare is about to lose 7 employees, tries to use the court to stop them from leaving. Judge rules so everyone loses. If Ascension and ThedaCare doesn’t reach a deal by monday, those 7 won’t go to work on Monday at either place.

This just sounds unfair against the healthcare workers from beginning to end imo. Could this set a precedence(sp?) to keep employees against their will?

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Silly employees. Don't they know at will employment is meant to be a one way street?

This is another example of US going to shit. An employee wants to quit and work somewhere else of their own volition, what right does the courts have to stop him or her from doing that? I said it before, but laws, rights and freedoms only apply for the rich in this country. The little guy can't even look for a better job nowadays without getting screwed over. This kind of practice is actually notorious in the tech industry, where you have non compete clauses baked in like it's nothing.

My thoughts in this, is that if you want to keep your employee, pay out if your ass what they're worth. We aren't a Muslim country with sharia law, so no need to act like it here.

We are going to lose to China at this rate, and its all because the courts have far too much power over minor things like this.

There are two sides to this, you can choose one.

The first side is the individual rights of the worker to work for whomever they choose, and if they choose whomever offers them the most money or best benefits, so be it.

The other side is more of the collective right, or "common good of the community" if ThedaCare truly is a major hub for saving lives of stroke and heart attack victims, and losing those doctors would result in the death of patients that could have been saved, then wouldn't it be for the "common good" for them to remain, even if they take a smaller pay?

Would it make the doctors selfish for going to where there is more money, even if it risks more lives to do so? Should they have the right to make that choice? Or does the common good prevail over individual liberties?

Those are the two sides to it. I would side on the rights of the individual to leave and follow a bigger paycheck, better working conditions, or better benefits. But the issue isn't 100% black and white.

@eoten: its very simple, the employer can pay more at whatever the market rate is or lose his employee. Nothing else matters. There can be alternative arrangements made for patients, such as being redirected elsewhere.

@eoten: It really is black and white as we've explicitly chosen at-will employment as the dominant employment policy in the States. There was even a refusal to match the other offer:

"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."

At will employment cannot be allowed to be something that only benefits employers.

And that is the side I would agree with.

But for people who try to make the argument that collective good is more important than individual rights, there's an argument for that. It's an argument I would disagree with, but you can see where that type of mentality leads to where someone with more authority can determine where someone works and for how much based on what is more beneficial to the public interest.

So in this case, I would disagree with the judge's decision, and rule "tough shit" for Theda.

its definitely a balance. In some cases the public interest needs to be weighed in, such as saving lives with a simple vaccine. It has almost zero cost to the individual but massive public benefit. But if that vaccine had a cost to the individual, like injury or death, or even a cost in significant earnings, then I would say do not get vaccinated. Screw the public, just look after yourself first.

This case is simply some body trying to cheap out on paying the market rate for an employees salary. The fact that you can even take such nonsense to court, and even stop someone for a single day going to work is itself a travesty and a joke.

Were they signed into a contract stating they couldn't work in the same field or for the competition for X amount of years after leaving?

A number of countries in Europe have systems in which employers and employees are both required to give notice of leaving in order to allow the other party to find replacement employees/employment. But that's not what we have. Business in the US decided this is what it wanted in the 19th century, and justified the practice with the argument that workers can leave their jobs without reason or warning as well.

Without that capability, at will employment is purely a power granted to employers without a benefit to employees. It puts all the risk of the system on the employee.

yeah. i seen where no notice... sht hits the fan and people could get hurt...

water treatment plants come to mind.

That's so beyond f***ed. The government has no right to tell people where they can and cannot work for a living.

Many companies often include non-compete clauses in their contracts which more often serves to intimidate people but are more often not binding enough to win in court with adequate counsel. Usually they just scare those incapable of finding council or are too afraid to try. Sure maybe this judge can do this but surely there will be appeals and lawsuit related to the employer holding up them starting their new job and they'll likely have to pay damages and legal costs or even bigger ones if they are unable to ever start their jobs.

Right? It's not like they could have paid them more, or improved their benefits, or done something else to incentivize them to stay.

No no no, had to take the whole thing to court with inexpensive, time-saving lawyers 😜

No, and why nurses and radiologists get those kind of contracts?

I haven't seen any get those contracts. Non compete clauses are usually in competitive private sector fields. Like if you work at Pepsi and learn all their corporate secrets and want to go work for Coca Cola. Those are the situations where you typically find those.

Exactly. If anything, nurses and a lot of personell within healthcare can not/should not have such contracts.

@horgen: They shouldn't exist at all. They've been abused to hell and back.

9/10 times they are scare tactics, aren't they?

@horgen: I'm more concerned that their economic costs are astronomical, and what they aim to achieve can be done without those costs via NDAs.

Suing people if they don't want to work their underpaying jobs? This is some grade A bullsh*t. Peak capitalism for you. What's next, enslaving people to work fields at low wage since 'people would die without food', excuse?

How do you enforce this? Work this low paying job or we'll throw you in jail? What a crock.

This seems like a pretty ballsy power grab. As you mentioned, at will employers can MOSTLY let anyone go at any time at a drop of the hat. Even then, they could find a reason to circumvent other barriers over time with gathering evidence. If a company can fire you any time, you, as an employee, may quit at any time.

@HoolaHoopMan: If this gets upheld (which is highly doubtful), workers just need to stop giving the usual courtesy notice which would give them time to file an injunction. Instead just leave your job on the last day, start working the new job on the next day, and call your old employer right before your first shift.

I would hope that no employees caught in this limbo show up to any work until it's ironed out. If there is ever a moment for bad PR to wipe out a bad company or top level leaders, this is it.

Good grief. Some of you people really like to go extremes with the drame. And this has nothing to do with any economic system.

I don't know of any that do. And this isn't an issue with NDAs or anything particular to any contract. The people who lost the employees are trying to make a claim that it's in the public interest for them to remain at a hospital that gets a lot of traffic requiring their skills. And that may not even be true. But as what someone believes is in the best interests of the community doesn't supersede the individuals right to tell that company to piss off.

Why use an At Will contract then? If these were so important, don't use contracts that allows them to leave together with their notice.

Thedacare refused to make a competing offer.

This can be used to suppress wages further. If you're not allowed to leave your job, why should your compensation increase?

They may be, but I have no knowledge about it.

I got 3 calendar months. Meaning if I hand in my resignation on the 2nd of the month, I got that whole month plus 3 more. At the same time, the company you move to is aware of the rules so once someone is hired, they aren't expected before another 3 months later.

It makes things a little slower and a lot more stable. With that said, do something awful enough and you're gone the same day. Those cases are rare though.

I guess if they were that important then they should be given a raise agreeable to them. If they aren't increasing salary then they aren't that important. Simple argument.

It seems like the only thing important is keeping those positions with low pay.

Yes and why do working Americans cheer this philosophy?

this is folks, were turning into the united states of china right here. I doubt even the chinese judges would prevent workers from joining a different company when the old company refused to match the offer.

Are you implying people should be forced to remain at a low paying job they no longer want? That seems more in line with China's philosophy TBH.

I meant the opposite. We are turning into china. But last I checked, even chinese judges wouldn't prevent workers from leaving a company for a better paycheck.

Dunno. It does seem prevalent in discussions about minimum wage that keeping others below you is a goal, instead of improving your own situation.

EMT pays around 12-15$/h I think. If min wage is increased to 15$/h, they shouldn’t be upset about that. They should instead ask for better pay… or start flipping burgers I guess. :P

And then the price of medical bills go up because the cost to pay every single person up the line just increased. Does that burger flipper making $15/hr have as much, or live as well as the person who made $15/hr before a minimum wage increase? No, he's right back to where he started, and the cycle continues.

Not every company can afford to give everyone all the money they want. Your philosophy of "just give everyone more money" doesn't exactly make sense to anyone who has ever had to handle their own finances at some point in their life. Some times "more money" just doesn't exist.

And since most bankruptcies are medical bills we should have some form of government oversight/medical like first world countries do.

When people don't have enough money: "They should get better jobs!"

When companies claim they can't pay better wages: "Legally prevent them from getting better jobs!"

So much for the belief in markets. Your faith in them collapsed like a house of cards the moment they benefitted workers.

Absolutely terrible... This is what happens when power becomes far too stratified, and the power balance is far too heavily in favor of money over labour.

@mattbbpl: Eoten's belief in the markets collapsing like a house of cards? That wouldnt be the first time. From what I have seen of him, everything he does is a proxy to hate on the left. Funny though how he calls us the tribalists.

Nothing you people have ever suggested, promoted, or supported would do anything of the sort. You simply think taxing one group is going to fund it all and you won't pay nothing. It's a fantasy, a pipe dream that doesn't exist in reality. Europeans pay more taxes than we do to fund it and can't even afford their own militaries to defend themselves with.

None of your solutions are even remotely workable because every single one of them ignores the underlying cause of increased medical spending, and pretends the way to solve the problem is by writing a blank check to big pharma signed by the tax payer. Given how many politicians promoting it are funded by and invested in pharmaceuticals, this does not surprise me in the least. Politicians promote their own interests, and convince the more gullible amongst us that it'll be to some community or societal benefit. It won't.

Maybe you should look towards solutions to reducing healthcare costs. You do realize a significant portion of procedures is because of taxation on the usage of the equipment. And the FDA does little more than gatekeep on behalf of the larger pharmaceutical companies and largely just operates a pay to play scenario and operates as an obstacle preventing lower cost alternatives to bigger cost medications from hitting the market.

But, this is way off topic. Though, as for the main topic, it seems everyone is in agreement that it's ridiculous to try to force people to work some place for lower pay/benefits.

The injunction has been lifted.

There isn’t a one to one correlation between increasing minimum wage and cost of products. If there is, explain the inflation since minimum wage was last increased in 2008 or 2009.

Do you think people were suddenly better off after that minimum wage increase than prior? Or do you think most people's situations remained the same as before? And where did I say it was the only cause of inflation? The corporate bailouts, stimulus checks, military spending and two failed wars with very little support from the rest of NATO, lots of things contribute, and the fact is minimum wage increases do not change the situation. Politicians who preach it simply talk out of their ass to buy the votes of people dumb enough to think they're going to have more purchasing power with their earnings

If you want to fix the job market, fix economy, fix inflation, all you have to do is stop letting government get in the way of, and fucking it all up to begin with.

Wonder what lead to that.

@eoten: Explain how increasing minimum wage wouldn't improve the life of min wage earners.

It's common sense. This image explains it well:

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@mattbbpl: Holy sh*t I thought that had to be satire, then I saw it was on TheFederalistPapers. These people would fail a basic micro econ class. Jesus.

Someone sent that to me years ago to prove to me that minimum wage increases only harmed minimum wage workers, and counting the sheer number of ways in which it is wrong made my head hurt. It can't get passed the second sentence without making an error that destroys the point it's trying to make ($1.23 after 23% tax is $0.95, which means the worker in their example already can't afford a gallon of milk in their hypothetical).

And it only gets worse from there.

Has it before? The poverty rate in the US has been virtually unchanged for decades. You can compare the chart to all the times federal minimum wages have been raised, and find no correlation. The largest decline in the poverty rate began in the late 50s, well before the "war on poverty" began.

This is all information readily available, there's no excuse not to know it. Minimum wage has had no effect on poverty before, but you think this time, this time it'll make us all live better? Lmfao, not how it works.

@eoten said:

@horgen said:

@eoten: Explain how increasing minimum wage wouldn't improve the life of min wage earners.

Has it before? The poverty rate in the US has been virtually unchanged for decades. You can compare the chart to all the times federal minimum wages have been raised, and find no correlation. The largest decline in the poverty rate began in the late 50s, well before the "war on poverty" began.

This is all information readily available, there's no excuse not to know it. Minimum wage has had no effect on poverty before, but you think this time, this time it'll make us all live better? Lmfao, not how it works.

That graph shows that the poverty rate has been as low as half of your starting point, recessions notwithstanding, with increases and reductions by as much as nearly half when excluding the relatively high starting point.

You haven't established any correlation between minimum wage and poverty level. You haven't even established that the poverty rate has been static - for instance, we can all clearly see rises and falls associated with recessions and growth periods.

But to your credit you have established a LEVEL of deviation in poverty rate over time - there's a big high point in the poverty level in 1959 followed by a fall, and then a lower level of variance within a 5% range (10% to 15%) thereafter. Let's see how that compares to the real value of the minimum wage over time:

Oh my! There was a sizable jump in the real value of the minimum wage corresponding with the fall in poverty rate at the start of your graph. Then it's within a smaller $2 variance for the comparatively flat period you called out in your own graph. It seems to me that you have a good starting point for establishing correlation between raising the minimum wage and lowering the poverty level.