Wisconsin Health Care Workers Free To Switch Hospitals After Temp Restraining Order Dropped

ThedaCare, Ascension Poached Hospital Workers Lawsuit Overview: 

• Who: A judge has tossed a restraining order keeping seven ThedaCare hospital workers from taking positions at Ascension Northeast Wisconsin.
• Why: ThedaCare had argued Ascension “poached” its staff during a period when it was already struggling with a surge in COVID-19 cases.
• Where: The competing hospitals are located in Wisconsin.

A temporary restraining order keeping seven Wisconsin health care workers from leaving their hospital jobs to work at a competitor has been lifted by a state court. 

Appleton, Wisconsin-based ThedaCare had been granted the temporary restraining order by a judge on Jan. 20. The order had been put in place to keep the employees from leaving to work for a competing hospital, Ascension Northeast Wisconsin, Business Insider reports.  

ThedaCare had complained that Ascension “poached” the workers during a time when COVID-19 cases were increasing in the area, requiring the hospital to put non-urgent elective surgeries on hold last week. 

The same judge dismissed the restraining order on Monday, paving the way for the workers to begin employment at Ascension, Business Insider reports.

Prior to its dismissal, the order had stipulated that Ascension either needed to give ThedaCare back a radiology technician and a registered nurse or cease hiring the workers until the hospital had been able to secure replacement faculty. 

Workers Applied For Open Positions Without Recruitment, Ascension Says

Ascension had argued that the employees applied to open job positions without any recruitment on the hospital’s behalf. 

“It is Ascension Wisconsin’s understanding that ThedaCare had an opportunity but declined to make competitive counter offers to retain its former employees,” the hospital said in a statement to a local ABC affiliate, Business Insider reports.

Timothy Breister, one of the ThedaCare employees who received an offer from Ascension, wrote in a letter to the judge that he and his coworkers believed they would be able to achieve a better work-life balance by choosing to change jobs, the Post-Crescent reports. 

In Pennsylvania last year, salary concerns led three nurses to file a lawsuit against the state’s Geisenger and Evangelical Community Hospital, with the nurses claiming the two hospitals had a secret “no poach” agreement that affected their job mobility and kept their salaries lower, PennLive reports. 

A shortage and “poaching” of hospital workers in and of itself is an issue that predates the COVID-19 pandemic; however, the global health crisis has certainly exacerbated it, according to New Jersey-based University Hospital CEO Dr. Shereef Elnahal. 

“Nurses early in their career are being poached by staffing agencies. And in some cases … they’re often sold right back to the hospitals they got poached from. Or a hospital down the road …,” Elnahal told NJSpotlight in December.

A similar class action lawsuit was filed against Raytheon Technologies and Pratt & Whitney last month over claims they and other aerospace firms had “no poaching agreements.” 

Have you voluntarily decided to switch employers during the pandemic? Let us know in the comments!

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