Northwestern’s medical residents and fellows vote to unionize

Northwestern’s medical residents and fellows overwhelmingly voted to unionize after a years-long effort, the National Labor Relations Board announced on Monday.

Interns, residents, chief residents and fellows at the McGaw Medical Center voted 794 to 148 in favor of union representation, a board spokesperson told the Sun-Times. One ballot was voided and another three were challenged, but they won’t be counted because they won’t affect the outcome of the election, the spokesperson said.

Voting concluded on Friday, but the ballots were not counted until Monday.

The Service Employees International Union’s Committee of Interns and Residents, which represents the Northwestern staffers and 30,000 other medical fellows nationwide, called the election a “landslide victory” for the employees, who often work more than 80 hours per week, according to a statement from the union. The group also said McGaw’s staff was now the largest resident physician union in the Midwest.

Peter Alexieff and Joseph deBettencourt, two of the doctors who helped lead the union efforts, said the process started three years ago, around the time the University of Illinois Chicago’s resident physician staff unionized in 2021.

Those behind the efforts took time to reach out to people in different departments, though Alexieff and deBettencourt said most people early on were in favor of a union at a time when the stresses of the pandemic were affecting medical staff.

“The amount of work that was being pushed on the residents was very stressful at the time without any representation, and that was a big push on this move to unionize,” Alexeiff, a second-year child neurology resident, told the Sun-Times Monday night.

“We had heard from so many different people who all wanted a seat at the table,” deBettencourt, a third-year pediatric resident at Lurie Children’s Hospital, said. “The system has a lot of breaking points. Us residents try to hold things together.”

The two said some hesitancy arose during the process, mostly from people who were uncertain what union representation would mean for them or concerns that control would be taken out of the hands of staff members.

The Evanston-based medical facility said it wanted to ensure free and fair elections for staff and that it accepted the results.

“We respect this outcome and the decision of our residents and fellows,” a spokesperson for McGaw Medical Center said in a statement to the Sun-Times. “Our focus will remain on supporting our residents and fellows and providing excellent care for our patients and communities.”

The vote comes about a year after graduate students at Northwestern and the University of Chicago voted to organize bargaining units with United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.

The next step for the group is bargaining.

“We’re really excited to be working with everyone and moving on to the next stage,” Alexieff said. “It give us the ability to make impactful changes to our working environment.”