LAC+USC physicians reach tentative agreement with L.A. County

Following months of bargaining to settle a new contract, resident physicians at the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center reached a tentative agreement with Los Angeles County June 5. Under the new agreement, all housestaff will see a pay rise of 5.5% during the first year, followed by 3.25% increases for the next two years and a $3,000 increase in annual housing stipends, according to a Committee of Interns and Residents/Service Employees International Union press release. 

The agreement will go into effect almost immediately after it is ratified — the process awaits a ratification vote taken by all represented residents and fellows at LAC+USC, as well as a vote of approval from the County of L.A. Board of Supervisors. The agreement’s approval is not on the agenda for the Board of Supervisors’ June 14 meeting, and the ratification vote among LAC+USC physicians is currently taking place. 

A product of more than 20 hours of bargaining since June 1, the agreement came three days after the physicians, represented by the CIR/SEIU, gave L.A. County notice of an unfair labor practice strike scheduled to take place between June 13 and 15. The physicians alleged bad faith bargaining on the part of L.A. County’s bargaining team, who physicians said had not met the union’s proposals and engaged in poor conduct, including repeatedly canceling bargaining sessions. 

On May 31, LAC+USC resident physicians voted nearly unanimously to allow their union to authorize a strike if they believed the L.A. County bargaining team continued to bargain in bad faith. Calling the strike galvanized movement at the bargaining table, said Adam Freeman, a third-year resident pediatric physician at LAC+USC and one of CIR/SEIU’s bargaining team members. Following the authorization, he said, many areas that L.A. County had made minimal movements in saw significant increases in monetary amounts and proposals offered.

“The fact that we were so upset and willing to strike over this bad faith bargaining really forced County to understand our sense of urgency,” Freeman said. “It definitely made them realize that we were not joking and we were completely serious and totally willing to go on strike if that needed to happen.”

In addition to wage increases for all housestaff, the new tentative agreement includes a signing bonus for incoming interns and a 14.5% pay rise for first-year residents at LAC+USC, who Freeman said are a historically underpaid group. 

“Especially as we move slightly out of the shadow of the pandemic, incoming interns are going to, hopefully, now be able to focus entirely on training and being able to learn and grow and develop as physicians,” Freeman said. “They won’t need to be concerned about being able to qualify for housing by the hospital or being able to eat and take care of their other personal needs and requirements when they’re not at the hospital.”

Also included in the proposal is the creation of a $125,000 fund to support diverse recruitment and diversity training initiatives at the hospital. The physicians have received the funding and are now in the process of deciding on the best ways to put it to use. 

“We feel that we should have an actual direct impact on improving diversity both within our medical schools and our workforce and with how we work with our patient population, and so we fought very hard to be able to control a monetary amount that we can utilize to try and improve diversity and diversity education for our staff,” Freeman said.

While the tentative agreement reached between the two parties signaled an averted strike, had the physicians gone on strike, they would have become the first CIR/SEIU members to do so in 32 years. Though the strike was seen as a last resort and not something the team decided on lightly, Freeman said he is proud of the collective will his team demonstrated in fighting for resident physicians’ rights. 

Healthcare workers should not shy away from calling strikes, Freeman said, if they believe such action is necessary to “advocate for what they feel they deserve.” Workers should avoid agreeing to exploitative terms because of a deep concern for patient care, he said, because better working conditions and better pay will ultimately benefit workers and patient care alike.

“I believe that our team really removed a lot of the stigma around going on strike or authorizing a strike, and we were able to emphasize that while our focus is patient care, the inability to compensate us and the inappropriate way that we’re being treated affect patient care,” Freeman said. “Even though we didn’t end up needing to actually go on strike, we were fully committed to doing so if that was required of us, and I think it will be a point of pride for all other unions.”