In one of the strongest organizing runs in recent labor movement history, CIR grew by more than 4500 doctors in a three-month period this winter. Starting in November, residents and fellows went public with massive organizing campaigns from New England to the mid-Atlantic, which included first-ever resident physician union drives in Rhode Island and Delaware. CIR now represents more than 37,000 physicians–doubling in size since 2020.
In just a few weeks, doctors up and down I-95 collected thousands of union cards, held a powerful press conference in Philadelphia, resisted fierce union busting, and won a total of eight National Labor Relations Board union elections to join CIR.
In Boston, where CIR doctors have led groundbreaking fights for decades, residents and fellows at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center won their mail-in ballot election in January, with an amazing 407-85 vote count. Their impressive election results came on the heels of their New England peers at Brown-affiliated Rhode Island Hospital, Kent Hospital, Butler Hospital, and Women and Infants Hospital, who became the first CIR doctors in Rhode Island.
Doctors at all four Rhode Island hospitals won their unions with impressive vote counts, including a victory of 464-27 at Rhode Island Hospital-Brown University Health. Ensuring that almost all of the state’s housestaff are now union, the Rhode Island physicians believe that their victories can truly transform the public health landscape of the country’s smallest state.
Sharing similar ambitions, Philly housestaff united their organizing campaigns city-wide to call for justice for healthcare workers and Philly patients, who have faced decades of divestment and staggering racial inequities in care. This January, physicians at Temple, Einstein, and Jefferson all won their union elections by overwhelming margins, with Jefferson residents winning 552-73, Temple physicians winning 425-11, and Einstein doctors securing their union with a vote count of 356-35.
Down the highway in Newark and Wilmington, Delaware, resident physicians at Christiana Care, the state’s dominant health system, won their union to become the first unionized resident physicians in the state–following their attending peers who recently joined Doctors Council!
At all of the new CIR hospitals, the physicians say that they believe having a union will allow them to fundamentally improve the state of training and care in their regions.
“We are reclaiming control from insurance companies and corporate executives to transform our healthcare system into one that truly prioritizes patients,” said Dr. Sarah Qadir, a psychiatry resident physician at Jefferson. “Together we’re building a better future for doctors, nurses, and most importantly, the communities we serve.”
