UCSF Fresno residents, hospital physicians officially form union. What happens next?
More than 300 UCSF Fresno interns, residents and fellow physicians have officially unionized.
The California Public Employment Relations Board on Friday recognized the union and certified the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU (CIR/SEIU) to represent the 327 resident and fellow physicians at UCSF Fresno, according to a Tuesday news release.
Community Regional Medical Center is the primary hospital where the UCSF Fresno residents and fellow physicians work. This group will join about 6,000 other UC resident physicians who have unionized in recent years.
Dr. Julia Marino, a UCSF Fresno third-year family medicine resident, is among those covered by the newly formed union. She said in general, the majority of residents are happy with UCSF, but still look forward to negotiating their contracts “and having a seat at the table and being part of those conversations in a more real way now with the union.”
However, Marino said, because of the residency setup with Community Regional Medical Center not being a UC-owned hospital, a few challenges remain.
“It’s a little tricky for us because our contracts are with UCSF, but in terms of some of the employment things that many residents struggle with, and feel we have been let down, is actually with the CRMC leadership who we do not negotiate with directly, so it’s a little bit of a challenging situation for our residents.”
Residents contract with UCSF, and UCSF then negotiates with Community Regional Medical Center.
In early June, the group announced that an overwhelming majority of UCSF Fresno interns, residents and fellow physicians had voted to unionize after seeing their program benefits being slashed and the number of residency slots being decreased. The group at the time said those actions took place in the midst of the pandemic.
Dr. Nathan Dreyfus, a second-year emergency medicine resident physician, said residents “care deeply” about the future of UCSF Fresno and its affiliation with Community Regional Medical Center.
“By safeguarding adequate support for our Residents, we will ensure the current and future health of our peers, our training programs, and most importantly our patients,” he said in the release.
Some of the specific benefits that were cut for residents included a meal stipend that went from $300 per month to $50 per month. Residents used to get the money on their badges. Meanwhile, CRMC in June maintained residents working at its facilities were able to get free daily meals and snacks at the physicians lounges at all times.
Those impacted also hadn’t received their cost-of-living raises since 2019.
Marino said food at the physicians lounges may sometimes not meet people’s dietary restrictions. With money on their badges, residents were not only able to buy a meal appropriate for their diet — if the one at the lounge wasn’t suitable — but they were also able to do “self-care,” such as being able to purchase an afternoon coffee.
“And then there are certainly times when their food is just not available,” she said of the physicians lounges. “As residents, we work 24 hours a day.”
Now that the group has officially formed a union, it will soon be able to start collective bargaining on a contract, according to the release.
“We value our physician residents and the contributions they make to our local hospitals and community,” Brandy Nikaido, a spokeswoman for UCSF Fresno, said in a statement to The Bee. “We fully support their right to make informed decisions about their employment and look forward to working with them, as we address the continued need for investment in high-quality training for the future physicians of our region.”
Community Medical Centers indirectly involved
Dr. Tom Utecht, chief medical officer for Community Medical Centers, said these contract negotiations don’t involve CMC directly, but “it is important to recognize that residency and fellowship are times of concentrated learning and growth, challenging in the best of times and exponentially more so over the last 18 months.”
“We continue to be impressed by the level of care UCSF residents and fellows provide to our patients and the dedication demonstrated by the teaching faculty to educating skilled, caring physicians of the future,” Utecht said in a statement to The Bee.
Marino said for the issues that have emerged at Community Regional Medical Center, residents “can certainly advocate for UCSF to then negotiate that with CRMC.”
In general, she said, residents can now negotiate with UCSF for benefits, such as a housing stipend or having UCSF cover the food budget, for example. She added that some UCSF Fresno residency programs are already stepping up to supplement the food stipend that was cut by Community Regional Medical Center.
The UCSF Fresno union will be looking at what some of the other UC unions have negotiated for in their contracts, Marino said. This group, she said, is one of the last to unionize.
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