Doctors at Bronx Hospital Win Right to Unionize

Medical interns and residents at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx have won the right to vote for a union. That's because the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that the interns and residents will be counted as "employees," not "medical students" as St. Barnabas had previously argued.

Dr. Toni Lewis, president of the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), a union that represents 13,000 interns and residents in the U.S., says organizing could give residents and interns a say in hospital policy. "It's so important for the residents to have that voice to improve care and efficiency, because they are the front-line providers," she says. "A lot of them do 24-hour shifts." CIR is part of Service Employees International Union, a 2.2 million member international union.

St. Barnabas interns and residents voted one year ago to join a union, but those ballots were frozen after St. Barnabas management appealed an earlier NLRB ruling.

Now, the hospital says it will wait for the results of this vote before deciding what to do next. St. Barnabas says many of the residents who voted a year ago during the last vote may no longer be residents.

CORRECTION: This story was updated to reflect that Dr. Toni Lewis works for CIR, and not SEIU Local 1199.