Resident physicians at ChristianaCare vote to unionize

Resident physicians and fellows at ChristianaCare voted on Wednesday to join a union, becoming the second group of doctors at Delaware’s largest health system to unionize in the last year.

With their 111-52 vote in favor of unionization, ChristianaCare residents are the first doctors-in-training to unionize in Delaware, the Committee of Interns and Residents, a division of the Service Employees International Union, said in a news release.

Last summer, attending doctors at ChristianaCare who already completed their residency training also voted to unionize, joining the SEIU-affiliated Doctors Council. Their 500-doctor unit is the United States’ largest group of attending physicians in the private sector, the union said.

In statement, a ChristianaCare spokesperson said the health system respects the union vote and is “committed to moving forward constructively through good faith bargaining with the union.”

“We will continue to foster a collaborative environment and an exceptional educational experience for these physicians who are the next generation of health care,” the spokesperson said, adding that the health system is also “actively engaged” in negotiating a contract with its attending doctors.

ChristianaCare residents announced their plans to unionize along with thousands of other trainee physicians in the Philadelphia region in November.

Residents at Temple University Hospital, Jefferson Health, and Einstein Healthcare Network, which is also owned by Jefferson, voted to unionize this month by large margins.

Doctors training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia were the only group to reject the local organizing push when they voted against unionizing by 17 votes in late December.

Union votes are expected to be counted in two more units at Temple Health on Thursday, CIR said.

The successful votes in Philadelphia mean that about 81% of the city’s resident physicians are now unionized.

Residents are doctors completing the final phase of their medical training, and fellows have already completed residency and are receiving further training in medical specialties. Residents earn relatively low pay, about $61,000 a year, compared to other professions that require special training, working up to 80-hour weeks.

The unionizing residents have said they feel they often don’t have a say in decisions about their work, and that their grueling hours contribute to burnout and make it harder to care for patients.

“We look forward to partnering with Christiana to create a fair contract that promotes the well-being of our resident physicians and helps us to be the best physicians possible for our community,” Layla Annous, a ChristianaCare resident in medicine and pediatrics, said in the union’s news release.

This most recent union drive in the Philadelphia area is part of a larger wave of organizing among resident physicians. Residents at Penn Medicine and the Rutgers University health system have both formed unions and reached contracts with their health systems in recent years.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comment from ChristianaCare and to correct the union vote. Staff writer Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.