The United States Court of Appeals in New York recently heard oral arguments on a case where a hospital was seeking to vacate an arbitrator’s award relating to minimum nurse staffing ratios. Not surprisingly, the court seemed skeptical at best of the hospital’s request to throw out the arbitrator’s decision. While this case focused on nurse staffing ratios in the hospital setting, unions increasingly seek minimum staffing levels and production speed limitations in a wide range of production settings as well.
In 2023, New York Presbyterian Hospital Association and the New York State Nurses Association. entered into a Memorandum of Understanding in which minimum RN staffing levels would be maintained in the hospital’s Cardio Thoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU). The MOU specifically linked the number of patients in the CTICU to a minimum number of RNs. For example, if there were 31 patients, the hospital needed to staff the unit with 27 RNs. If there were 25 patients, the minimum number of nurses was 22.
Not surprisingly, the hospital found it nearly impossible to guarantee those ratios due to leaves of absence, staff shortages, and less than successful recruiting efforts. The union filed a grievance in June of 2023 asking an arbitrator to declare the hospital in violation of the contract and to award financial remedies. In May of 2024, a highly respected arbitrator did just that. The arbitrator found that the MOU was specific in its requirements and that the hospital agreed to the terms knowingly. The arbitrator rejected the hospital’s defenses that it should not be found liable because it was aggressively recruiting to fill open positions, the CTICU was never unsafe, and the hospital had no pattern of attempting to circumvent the agreement. The arbitrator awarded nearly $300,000 in backpay, awarded to any nurse who was required to work on a shift where the agreed upon ratios were not met, although the arbitrator did make a technical adjustment to minimize the impact.
Following the award, the hospital went to federal district court seeking to have the arbitrator’s decision vacated. That court denied the motion and granted the union’s motion to enforce the award. It is that case that is on appeal. Given the comments by the judges hearing the appeal, relief appears unlikely.
Bottom Line: Employers in any setting should just say NO to any and every demand from a union to put language into a contract that could reasonably be read as requiring a minimum number of employees on duty at any particular time, or to contractually binding limits on things like production expectations. Alternatively, if you feel compelled to add language, it is imperative that you include an “out” for the employer that recognizes circumstances beyond the employer’s control such as unanticipated leaves, absenteeism, and recruiting difficulties.