St. Christopher’s Hospital support staff got rid of their union

The support and administrative workers at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children voted to dissolve their union late last year, bucking recent organizing trends that have led to new unions and strikes at other Philadelphia-area hospitals.

Nearly 300 St. Christopher’s clerks, medical assistants, food service workers, and other support staff were represented by District 1199C, an affiliate of the national AFSCME union for hospital and health care workers. They unionized in 2016 and signed their last contract in 2020.

More than 220 workers participated in the Nov. 30 election administered by the National Labor Relations Board. Nearly 60% voted against the union.

A spokesperson for Tower Health, which owns St. Christopher’s, said the hospital respects the employees’ decision.

Union president John Hundzynski declined to comment.

» READ MORE: At these two Temple hospitals, 2023 was a big year for unionizations

The campaign to get rid of the union began when outpatient service coordinator Shidiah Jackson moved from part- to full-time work at St. Christopher’s in 2018.

Her full-time peers were unionized, but no one told her that she would become part of the union. When she noticed union dues on one pay stub, human resources told her it was a mistake and refunded her.

She recalled having no contact with the union until last summer, after Jackson asked for a raise and hospital administrators told her that she needed to go through the union’s process to get one.

“I’m being told that I’m in this union that I know nothing about,” Jackson said.

Jackson didn’t want to be part of a union. She could advocate for her own benefits and never got in trouble so didn’t see the need or wish to pay for it with dues.

When she learned that she was part of the union, she met with her local delegate, a St. Christopher’s worker trained to assist peers in exercising their rights under the contract. The union isn’t going anywhere, Jackson recalled the delegate saying, whether she liked it or not.

“OK, we’ll see about that,” she said.

Jackson began researching how to leave a union, or decertify. She filed petitions with the NLRB, helped by a lawyer from the National Right to Work Foundation. The Virginia-based nonprofit group represents workers in cases against unions. Locally, lawyers from the foundation represented workers at Good Karma, a coffee shop in Washington Square that ended their union representation in September.

Jackson received advice from the foundation, but said they did not represent her legally.

» READ MORE: Good Karma employees voted to get rid of their union

The process to terminate a union arrangement is similar to forming a new one: Workers first need to sign a petition to show that others are interested, and then the NLRB holds an election.

Ultimately, Jackson gathered the necessary signatures and on Nov. 30, she and a majority of her peers voted to end union representation.

Unions were active in Philadelphia last year, including high-profile decision by Penn Medicine residents and fellows to unionize. In March, they formed the largest new union in Philadelphia in a half century.

The region’s hospitals also saw new unions form across diverse groups of workers, including nurses, techs, clinical research staff, and gig workers who act as patients.

» READ MORE: Philly workers got organized in 2023. Look back on this year’s strikes, walkouts, and union campaigns.

“It’s a big victory for Shidiah and her colleagues that in a ‘union town’ they were able to get rid of a very powerful union,” said Glenn M. Taubman, an attorney with the National Right to Work Foundation.

Data shows that unionization petitions are more common than decertification petitions. The NLRB administered 1,525 elections for workplaces seeking to form unions and to only 168 decertification votes in year that ended in September 2023, the board’s data shows.