Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

  The Court must defer to arbitration to determine the hospital’s obligations to its nurses under the union contract.

  The US Norris LaGuardia Act of 1932 established a bedrock legal principle that Federal courts are forbidden from issuing injunctions to decide the issues in disputes between labor and management in the private sector. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NEW YORK May 1, 2020

  The nurses’ union filed suit against a private hospital in New York State to obtain an injunction requiring the hospital to take certain steps to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission to the hospital’s nurses. 

  The nurses asked the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to order the hospital to increase the availability of personal protective equipment such as respirators and gowns and to provide a proper space to put on and take off such items so that disease-free areas in the hospital do not become contaminated.

  The Court was also asked to require the hospital to make testing available to employees on demand and to protect employees’ physical and emotional health by respecting their rights to leave and reasonable accommodation.

  The hospital insisted it was already doing everything recommended by government agencies to stem the spread of the virus and to protect its employees.

  The hospital also argued that the measures demanded by the nurses would impose an unbearable burden on the hospital that could effectively paralyze the hospital’s ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency.

  The Court expressed its sympathy and its gratitude to the hospital’s nurses whom it saw as among the true heroes in the current public health emergency.

Nevertheless, the Court declined to issue an injunction, adhering to established principles of labor law that rule out judicial intervention into disputes between labor and management.

  A bedrock principle of US private-sector labor law is that disputes between management and union members must be resolved through the grievance and arbitration process that interprets the intent behind the terms of the collective bargaining agreement that was ratified by labor and management.

  The Court acknowledged that some nurses at the hospital may, or in fact are likely, to contract COVID-19 during the time it will inevitably take for the arbitration process to go forward.

  At the same time the Court also expressed a strong reluctance to let potentially cumbersome judicial interference get in the way of the hospital’s ability to make cogent flexible decisions in the face of the current crisis.

  The bottom line is that what the hospital must do to protect its nurses in this crisis is not an issue for a Federal court. The issues must worked out through mutual compromise or ruled upon in arbitration.  Union v. Med. Ctr., __ F. Supp. 3d __, 2020 WL 2097627 (S.D.N.Y., May 1, 2020).