The assymetry of benefits granted by this injunction between the employer and employee is shocking here. The nurses are not allowed to work for the new employer but the current employer isn't required match compensation until the case is resolved.
This is on top of Wisconsin being an at-will state and there being no formal employment contract in this case. I'm not even sure how the judge is legally able to do this considering the material harm to employees.
There seems to be a lot of discussion on this at r/nursing
> The nurses are not allowed to work for the new employer but the current employer isn't required match compensation until the case is resolved.
Who cares about matching compensation? This is about the right to end employment and seek employment elsewhere. Right to provide a living for yourself and your family is a fundamental human right. It's appalling that this wasn't thrown out of court immediately. I'm not a fan of non-compete clauses, but at least there is a voluntary contractual component.
In a broader sense, it's terrifying that this has even gotten so far and I fear it'll only get worse with more and more liberties being stripped away for [current emergency].
They’re not required to stay at the old employer, they’re just not allowed to start at the new employer. Cold comfort for anyone with bills to pay, but they aren’t being targeted by the decision, just the new employer. They’re free to go find a third employer. (Which is probably how the judge sleeps at night after putting so many people in an impossible situation.)
Will the judge file injunctions against the next healthcare system that offers roles to ThedaCare ex employees? Where does it end? This judicial action warrants federal intervention. Otherwise we arguably don't have at will, somewhat free market employment, but instead crony capitalism feudalism ("you will work for who we allow you to work for").
Tangentially, ThedaCare's Level II Trauma accreditation (which hangs in the balance due to the departure of these workers [1]) should be re-evaluated.
> Timothy Breister, an Appleton resident and one of the seven employees involved in the systems' dispute, submitted a letter to McGinnis Friday before the hearing describing his experience.
> One of his colleagues received an offer from Ascension that was attractive "not just in pay but also a better work/life balance," which caused others on his team to apply, Breister wrote.
> After approaching ThedaCare with the chance to match the offers they'd been given, Breister wrote that they were told "the long term expense to ThedaCare was not worth the short term cost," and no counter-offer would be made.
And of course a big problem has always been that Halliburton can't conscript you to improve their bottom line when fighting a foreign war. Good thing we are fixing that.
Although Halliburton can create the situation of pressures where the government conscripts you to war but the level of indirection for control over you is inconvenient. So we're really just making it a bit easier and cutting out the middle man. All hail our new leaders.
Not a good example to give. One could just as easily argue that a social contract granted the Jan 6 rioters the right to storm the Capitol as though it were Bastille. There is no just cause for mobocratic vigilanteism of any kind.
I believe the quote means, the nurses who now can't work should continue receiving their usual pay from their former employer(the one filing the lawsuit). Without working. "Paid leave" or whatever.
In essence they are arguing these nurses have a non-compete, when they dont. As a judge I would approve this, disallowing the nurses from working for their new employer but also the old employer must keep paying them to sit at home. That'll put an end to these frivilous lawsuits quickly.
I’m responding as a nurse. There has been tons of discussion about this situation amongst nurses all weekend long.
Over the past couple of decades, in the private sector employers have crafted the norm of at will employment. Then during the previous administration this at will idea found it's way into civilian federal service with the requirement that federal employees complete not one, but TWO years of new employee probation. This, all because, you know, employees are lazy and shiftless. The sole purpose of this "at will" employment trend has been to guard the interest of corporations.
Now dig this... In Wisconsin, it is not unusual for a new nurse, during onboarding, to be compelled to sign a form acknowledging that a FOUR week notice to quit is required in order to vacate a position. Then, buried deeper in the paperwork is a form that says that your employment is “at will.” So, they can fire a nurse on a dime, cause hey, "at will." But, the same nurse must give a 4 week notice to quit?
Also, there are certain healthcare organizations that, if a nurse does not work out their notice, or does not provide advanced notice to quit, the company will pay all unpaid hours at MINIMUM wage. I personally know of two nurses that had to go through the time, expense, and stress to hire an attorney who to press the issue and the organization in order to be paid what is actually owed.
Also, as a nurse, if one is to refuse an unsafe assignment, or speak up about an unsafe assignment, it is not uncommon to be threatened by administration to be reported to the board of nursing for patient abandonment. When really, how can you abandon patients that you have not taken responsibility for? But, who has the time, or energy, to die on that sword, especially when safe or not, there are sick patients that need care. Also, it is not uncommon for management, as they are punching out at 5pm, to compel nurses to hold over to cover staffing shortages. Again, threats of patient abandonment.
These things that I am describing are not one off situations. These things happen routinely. Nurses have been over worked prior to the pandemic. Then when the pandemic hit, we became overworked selfless heroes, working in trash bags. Now that the nation, all the world really, is experiencing pandemic fatigue, we are being referred to in the press as selfish and money hungry wenches abandoning facilities, leaving a wake of staffing shortages as we depart to become guns for hire to the highest bidder. Which, by the way is at will employment at it’s finest.
Now, the same corporations, who championed “at will” employment, treat nurses as an expense rather than a valuable finite resource and they have decided to spend money on legal fees rather than paying the extra $7/hr that the nurses were asking. The hospital would have retained their staff and we would not be having this discussion.
But, instead, they are seeking to set a precedence, that in dire situations, nurses ought not be able to quit their jobs. Under the guise of protecting patients that don’t even exist they are attempting to interrupt the these nurses ability to make a living and the nurses are not even their employees anymore. Capitalism at its best, Ascension healthcare, paying what the market demands in order to hire employees with valuable and rare skills.
This whole issue, to many of the nurses ai've talked to feels like Theada Care is trying extend the concept of compelling nurses to work, against their will, so future patients won’t be “abandoned.” They argued that the public at large would be at risk without the nurses being under their employment.
Theda Care raised the alarm asking "where will the poor public receive their care?” I’ll tell you where… Across the street at the other hospital. You know, the one that values their staff and pays a competitive wage.
Hospitals, I'm pretty sure, receive the exact same reimbursement from insurance whether they are staffed adequately or understaffed. If this is so, then hospitals actually profit when they are short staffed.
Finally, we live in an age of a pandemic and emergency orders, issued by governors, that are in some cases extremely broad. For instance in Wisconsin, under the emergency order, patients lost the right to sue for malpractice… Patients could not sue at all, this included for errors that occurre during the delivery of routine care or during the course of elective procedures. This was unnecessarily broad and extremely protective of corporate interests at the expense of regular citizens. Just one example of the broad strokes our covid emergency order was written in.
Finally, many commenters have raised the constitutional issues that are at stake in this situation. To most of us, these constitutional ideas exist in some ethereal space completely disconnected from our reality. They are important to us, but they seem like distant schoolhouse rock ideas. We don’t “see” constitutional questions, we feel oppressive working conditions that rob us of our ability to earn the living that we want, in the way we want. These conditions have robbed many of us of our soul...
It seems a bit more limited than some are reporting:
"On Friday, an Outagamie County judge ruled in favor of ThedaCare and issued this order:
“Make available to ThedaCare one invasive radiology technician and one registered nurse of the individuals resigning their employment with ThedaCare to join Ascension, with their support to include on-call responsibilities or;
“Cease the hiring of the individuals referenced until ThedaCare has hired adequate staff to replace the departing IRC team members.”"
It's also a temporary injunction that could be ended as soon as their Monday 10am next meeting. Still not really sure why they should be able to get an injunction at all though.
Probably until the facts can be figured out. To play Devil's Advocate, what if the hiring firm I was just paying them to leave a competitor and didn't have real roles for them to fill. That might constitute unfair business practices. Temporary injunction are often way to avoid major damages and see whats going on
Can a lawyer please weigh in on this? I don't believe there is anyway this should be legal. I don't have to wait for my employer to find my replacement before I leave. This isn't the feudal system where we peasants are tied to the lords land.
Also if I were one of these employees I would simply not show up to the old employer, they can go f#ck themselves.
I believe this ruling has to do with unfair competitive advantage. The employees are not prohibited from quitting or working elsewhere. The company attempting to hire the employees is prohibited from hiring the employees. It’s a temporary measure until the court system works out the legality of everything.
Imagine this scenario. There are two heart centers in a city. One of them decides to hire the doctors and nurses from the other heart center and does so and then massively increases prices. I’m not a lawyer but I think this sort of thing is not permitted (or desirable).
> Imagine this scenario. There are two heart centers in a city. One of them decides to hire the doctors and nurses from the other heart center and does so and then massively increases prices. I’m not a lawyer but I think this sort of thing is not permitted (or desirable).
Would be nice to know what state or federal law doesn't allow this type of behavior.
I agree but think of how much choice you have in emergencies. A person is passed out or has a stroke and 911 is called. Some cities have multiple ambulance companies and the patient has no choice. The ambulance decides that Alpha is the best hospital, its not the closest but is good for strokes. Spouse shows up and is told what procedures is best. Price is never mentioned, no talk about how Alpha and Beta is compared in skill or price. The stroke victim is at Alpha and after the initial treatment, only an idiot would transfer them now. BTW, this is based off personal experience. I did not select the ambulance for my wife, they transported her 15 miles instead of 2 and 5. She died and because I waited a week, the hospital would not allow me to see the bill, instead I got over ten different doctor groups sending me bills. I did not get any choice if they used Charlie or Delta anesthesiologists who worked for two different companies or other brain surgeons. In fact, by the end the hospital explained that I couldn't pay there but had to deal with the different services individually. The last doctor's bill led to me stating what part of my wife's death did they play. Considering they were trying to get over $5000 from me instead of going through my insurance, boy did they drop their request quickly.
The original article has so little information about what that case is actually about, it's stiking by its absence. There's discussion about motivations, but no real discussion about any relevant laws. It's like it's from a parallel universe where the entire concept of a legal system doesn't exist.
I, and I suspect many others, are not aware there was any legal mechanism for a government in the US to prevent you from selling your labor to someone else, assuming there is no contract forbidding it.
The injunction is against the hiring hospital, which is a heavily regulated, licensed entity.
I don't have a clue if there is a provision addressing group recruitment in those regulations, but it wouldn't be shocking.
In general hospital regulation has lots of room for improvement...there's this idea that more hospitals will be more expensive and that it is good to move services to lower cost facilities. Neither of those make all that much sense. Competition and utilization are good things, not bad things.
Can the hiring hospital hire contractors through a contract agency? And if that contract agency happens to employ these nurses, would that violate this ruling?
Inasmuch as I agree with your sentiment, there unfortunately are such restrictions. For example, trade embargos on strongly encrypted software. No US national, whether a citizen or resident, is allowed to sell or freely provide strongly encrypted software to Cuba, North Korea, (North) Sudan, and Iran among others under penalty of law.
That scenario doesn’t seem very sustainable. The other heart center can hire new doctors, or pay more wages or whatever. Does it really need legislation?
Suppose it’s a trauma center that requires a certain level of staffing to be certified and that once said staffing can’t be maintained the center loses certification. Competitor decides to poach employees en masse to initiate decertification. Suppose furthermore that certification is a lengthy process.
That’s nonsense though. A single trauma center can’t hoard the entire labor supply of nurses.
Raising healthcare prices due to market power for any reason is a problem regardless, and one that should be solved with regulation and market forces on the hospitals, not restricting nurses’ freedoms.
It’s not that a given trauma center has all the entire supply it’s that it can’t find replacements quick enough if too many people are hired away too quickly.
Then raise wages. And charge higher prices, which is fine in this imaginary world because your supposed only competitor is also raising wages. And then, in no time, it will become obvious to the hospitals that this stupid labor market war in which consumers lose and nurses win is dumb and it’ll normalize.
And again, the regulatory tool to fix this kind of problem is not restricting nurse freedoms even if it did make sense
You fail to grasp the issue at hand. If company A hires, all at once, so many key employees of company B that company B can’t replace the workers soon enough to avoid irreparable damage then company A might be engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
This is not a real thing. Nurses are far more fungible than key leaders and yet leaders are poachable. If they’re stealing nurses, then just raise wages. It’s that simple. How else are the nurses being stolen?
My real question is what about the employees in all this? Do they not have grounds for reparations ( clear harm seems to be there ) here or since ThedaCare said they would not pay anyway, employees have no chance to prevail in court?
Why would this not be legal? I can offer as much or little money as I want to hire people. If I have deep pockets and can out pay for talent I will do so. There is nothing illegal or immoral about that.
Can someone steelman this judges reasoning here for me? I just can’t see it. This seems like insanity to me in at at will state. The worst part is that the damage has already been done. Employees that would have left their job to find better work will now be terrified of this happening to them unless we make laws explicitly forbidding this.
It’s just like non competes. They’re mostly unenforceable but employers don’t want to risk someone trying to enforce it so they just won’t hire you.
> Can someone steelman this judges reasoning here for me? I just can’t see it. This seems like insanity to me in at at will state.
I assume the judge believes that legislature's intent when making Wisconsin an at-will state was that this state of affairs would never protect individual employees and always be used to protect the interests of employers. I imagine he's right about that, too, although it's a disgusting thought and the employees will eventually prevail.
> The point of the injunction isn't to come up with a perfectly fair solution. It's to prevent irreparable harm, as might be caused if the only level 2 trauma center in the area can no longer function. Any claims for compensation that the nurses have are still valid and can be settled later.
As someone whose only law training is watching law review channels on YouTube I agree.
Basically getting paid at the same rate rather than an increased rate is repairable harm (by paying money if the nurses win), forcing downtime at their clinic is not.
This assumes that the old employers have some kind of legal standing to make their victory at least plausible.
I don’t understand how encroaching on the civil liberties of citizens is legally allowed for keeping a medical center staffed (however necessary it is deemed to be).
For example, is it legal for a town to, let’s say, select 5 people and say they can only work as firemen for the local fire station and no one else is allowed to employ them because we absolutely need a fire station ?
In the context of ironmanning the position the framing is very different:
Party A: the firemen.
Party B: the city.
A want to stop providing a service for B. B want A to keep providing the service. On all precedents, laws, and common sense they are allowed to do so. B claims that this will do irreparable damage to life/property/society and ask a judge to mediate the conflict and also to make B keep proving the service while the conflict is being mediated.
In this specific case a fireman could not simply walk off the job in the middle of suppressing a fire, the city position is that firemen are always a critical infrastructure and either the firemen claim that the city is at fault for some reason or they guarantee continuity of the service they where providing.
I was steelmanning the position of "a judge orders people where to work" and so I came up with a convoluted scenario where that could be argued to be true.
Whether employees are property is a separate matter; In may situation the assumptions are
1) the firemen hold a specialized job with specialized requirements
1.a) it would take considerable time to replace them
2) their service is critical
3) they took responsibility for providing a service
4) the city did everything right and there is no material need to leave the job
I am not surprised by this story being more nuanced.
Another even more convoluted case: can all the personnel of a nuclear power plant walk off mid shift with no one to keep it working safely?
Some jobs also include taking responsibility of others life, a best effort to keep the service running is not too much of a stretch.
Yes, the nuclear power plant workers can walk off mid shift.
Hence the incentive for the employer to provide appropriate compensation and hire sufficient redundant staff.
If you want redundancy and reliability, then pay for it. Limiting labor sellers’ freedom is unacceptable, especially when the labor buyers have no such expectations of commitment and can stop buying labor anytime they want. Society cannot have its cake and eat it too.
This employer must have been grossly underpaying staff to have a whole team up and leave, especially educated professionals.
> When ones employment can be terminated mid-shift with no warning by management
If the management also fires all the safety critical employers and leave the power plant without any workers to keep it safe that is also a crime.
This position is quite simple:
if X is very very bad then causing X to happen is illegal.
whether the fault is the employee or the employers is for a court to decide. But if a city remains without a fire brigade or a nuclear power station without safety critical worker it is someone's fault.
Yeah, there's also the pragmatic aspect of that issue - you can probably guess the amount effort you'll get out of someone if you're actively trying to compel them into the role.
It's probably not that great to have a fire station staffed by firemen that don't want to be firemen.
Wisconsin had active mandatory public service laws as late as the early 1900s. My understanding is that they are still on the books … but that’s outdated information.
> Basically getting paid at the same rate rather than an increased rate is repairable harm (by paying money if the nurses win), forcing downtime at their clinic is not.
There is "downtime" at the old place either way, since the nurses are not going to show up at the old hospital on Monday anyway. From the TFA:
> That means the seven health care workers would not be working at either hospital on Monday.
Steal man/devils advocate here. The judge didn't make the law. They are just communicating it. If you don't like the outcome, vote for politicians that will change the law.
Note:I would have to see the court ruling to see what the basis in law is
Can’t steelman an argument that isn’t in front of me, but it’s probably a unique decision to this case that relies on the following alleged facts: 1. Ascension Wisconsin poached 7 of ThedaCare’s staff in a short period of time that were all part of an 11 person team 2. ThedaCare-Neenah is the only Level II Trauma Center in Fox Valley and 3. the people on this team have a set of hard to replace skills that the people of Fox Valley depend on and 4. this is a temporary order, only sufficient time for ThedaCare to find replacements.
So the damage you’re worried about being done? I don’t want to discount the damage this might do to the 7 people who tried to change employers, but ThedaCare wants them to stay, working, which means getting paid, for that time, and this is unlikely to realistically affect anyone in a completely different industry and profession.
Was it a good or fair call by the judge? Hard to say, but the “this will set a new precedent” types of arguments against an order or decision rarely end up setting the kinds of sustainable precedents people imagine they could.
Do the hospital executives of ThedaCare (the original employer) think this will improve their chances of recruiting anyone 2 years from now? Irrespective of the insanity of the ruling, it’s an abject failure of leadership to pursue this course in the first place.
After Slavery was outlawed in the US, southern states were quick to pass laws forbidding black people from changing employers until the growing season was over as a way to keep wages low and enact slavery lite.
Slavery is over but racism is not. Just look at the new Texas, Georgia, etc voting laws and redistricting which are all meant to discourage people of color from voting. Jim Crow 2.0
I hope this gets rapidly overturned/reviewed. I don't understand how one company can be granted an injunction against another for hiring people who have left that company (based on the claim that it would hurt the previous company).
I liken it to being able to sue your competitor for buying the last widget in the open market that you also needed to manufacture your product. In what way is that an enjoin-able action?
Wow man that’s crazy. I thought you had to at least go to prison to become a slave in this country but I guess you can become hospital property too if you work for one.
None of those nurses can be compelled to work for ThedaCare by the court.
If I were any one of those employees, I would quit effective immediately and not work a day more in the old facility. It serves ThedaCare right! They made poor business decisions by declining to pay each of those employees fair compensation. Losing them is the consequence. Their case against Ascension will not hold water.
More American workers should take note and follow suit. Do not accept poor work conditions and low wages. Collectivize. Refuse to work for bad employers and take everybody else with you. This is our power to make change.
At-will employment. I don’t see how anything outweighs that. Former employer didn’t want to raise salaries nor did they want to lose people. They chose to go to court instead. The traitorous 7?
Before everyone loses their minds that somehow this is the free market run amok, keep in mind that healthcare is one of the most regulated and government-involved industries not only in the USA but on earth.
To be fair, "I've just been in a car accident and require immediate stabilization followed by airlift to a Level I trauma center" is a process most of us don't think about.
There's nothing that says a Level I trauma center needs to exist... except planning (largely by states) to try and ensure it does. And a lot of ensuring availability means balancing profitability against access to the market.
A VC firm financing a facility across the street, until it loses interest and both implode financially, is of no good to anyone.
I think there is a bit of a difference between "we have to make sure a level 1 trauma center exists" and "we will restrict people building more level 1 trauma centers indepedently", which is what I think the parent comment was implying.
My point is that before people go crazy about a judge not letting people quit, a judge also won’t let you work in this industry simply because you want to. It’s a highly regulated, government-interfered business so nurses being disallowed from jumping to another hospital is not surprising in the context of all the ways the market is managed.
Parent isn't speaking about just qualifications, but the extent to which the government also controls supply of healthcare professions in the US, largely via its residency funding, and requirements to complete a residency program to practice (to simplify the system to a sentence).
So it's generally accurate to say "You cannot be a physician in the United States without the federal government's permission." (At minimum, indirectly via position funding)
And since we generally require a credentialed physician at some point for most care, that trickles down the entire system.
There is a go fund me fund started for the 7 involved health care professionals. called "Thedacare Seven-ExEmployee Support fund." on the Go Fund Me website.
I would love to try passive resistance. Wearing scrubs stating "Thedacare supports communism", "indentured servant", "serf". Walking by the administrator's office repeatedly and calling him pinhead. Singing nursery tune over and over again. Putting post its with insult all over the admin staff's care. During my own down time, going by executive's houses with signs and chanting.
Or talk to the new hospital ask for 3 months and work for a 3rd company and then quit after 90 days.
I don’t see what the problem is because the courts and government can’t get involved in private matters (vaccines, mandates). Conversely, the courts and governments can get involved in private matters (abortions, vaccines, mandates). It’s all perfectly clear - do what those in control want and everything will be fine.
This is grotesquely anti-free market. Labor has to be able to pick and choose employers freely for a free market to work. This Judge is actively anti-capitalist.
I can only conclude that the Judge is a closet socialist, or worse, a communist.
I know, what I said applies to courts / rulings as well. Unfortunately capitalism has been allowed to run amok so much that our entire society here is capitalist controlled. Hence why the judge has ruled so that the capitalists can have their cake (they know the peasants can't not work, as they own no capital).
Every time something goes wrong in capitalism, folks like to claim socialism or communism. This is literally capitalism.
I don't think capitalists or communists like this one. This is very much a place that would (and should) go out of business but for this government intervention.
But I quoted the ruling well above, it doesn't say that they can't work for the new employer, just that the new guy has to either make one person available so the other can continue to operate or it can choose to cease hiring more staff. So they can be employed by the new employer for more money, they just have to help this place limp along until it can find people to work there (which... I can't imagine anyone wanting to after this).
Presumably this isn't so much for the employer's benefit as for the public so that they don't lose access to a medical facility with the particular licenses it has.
But yeah, I don't think anyone argues that this business isn't too dumb to survive after it rejected their counter-offers when they had a new job in hand, what the hell did they think was going to happen?
> what the hell did they think was going to happen?
That the government would help them enforce their exceptional control over their employees, at least to the extent of making their lives hard enough in the short term that they would either have no choice but to return, or would serve as an example of what happens to anyone who thinks to leave in the future. So far, they seem to have thought right.
>That the government would help them enforce their exceptional control over their employees,
They didn't get that. The injunction doesn't cover the employees at all, only the new employer, who either has to make someone available so the original place can continue in operation for a bit.
So it seems like they're working at the new place with the new, higher wages and the old place is going to pay legal fees + whatever compensation to the new employer.
Financially, they've only managed to screw themselves even with this injunction. I quoted the injunction text in another thread on this story, BTW, since the headline is flat out wrong.
There's a major difference between employees that hold capitalist views and employers with capitalist views. Namely, the amount of capital they hold and the way they try to leverage it.
If you ask any CEO if they're a capitalist or not, they will enthusiastically agree. However, employees are considered part of their capital which is why they will gladly toss in things like non-competes, assignment of inventions and float things like suing employees for failure to give proper resignation notice.
The goal here isn't to retain employees. They've even mentioned that they felt no need to attempt to retain them and this injunction solely prevents them from working at their new company. This is simply to punish them and to try and scare current workers to prevent them from doing the same. Will it work? Probably not. Though hopefully people start realizing that things like at-will employment are solely for the employers benefit, not yours because of the other legal ways they have to punish you if they so desire.
> this injunction solely prevents them from working at their new company.
Actually the headline appears to be just plain wrong, if you look at the other threads I quoted it there. It doesn't bind the employees who left at all, it asks the new employer to make one person (not necessarily even these folks) available so they can continue to operate.
This place deserves to go out of business, frankly. The ruling seems aimed only at making sure that there's someone to care for people who need medical care in the short term, not so much for the benefit of this stupid employer who shot themselves in the foot.
Then the judge should have forced the company to open its purse. For example, all of the executives’ pay is diverted to the nurses they want until they hire new people.
Executives get a heads you win, tails you lose situation for no reason. It was their job to make sure the place is offering sufficient compensation to stay staffed, and if they failed, they need to pay for the damages.
That's just it, they're not getting a "heads I win tails you lose" out of this injunction at all. And they will have to open their purse.
ThedaCare shot themselves in the foot by having to pay lawyers, legal fees, get new nurses, pay for any services they hire out of the new company to maintain their capacity, etc. which is going to cost a lot more than they could've gotten with the counter-offer. Meanwhile the workers still get to work for the new place at higher pay. They are not being enslaved at the current place according to the temporary injunction I read. The new place merely has to help the old one provide medical services temporarily (for which they can, and certainly will demand compensation).
They absolutely should be firing the ThedaCare management, though. They really screwed this one up badly.
The judge seems to be just trying to make sure that the patients of ThedaCare don't suffer for the mistakes of the hospital management. ThedaCare is putting themselves on the hook for plenty of extra costs with this stupidity, and they likely will have to pay significant costs over this for their failures in hiring nurses--and competent management.
So a judge preventing a free market outcome (employers competing for talent and inducing medical staff to join a competitor presumably due to higher comp) is somehow a result of capitalism/free market?
I don't think you'll win too many people over to the collectivist side with incoherent points like the above.
You have to be willing to take the good AND the bad with capitalism. Outcomes like this are possible in both unfettered capitalism (capture of things like government / judges), and in the opposite of capitalism.
We'd do better if folks wouldn't resort to just ignoring the bad sides of either.
Capitalism is not synonymous with free market. A free market will inherently be captured by someone in the long run with capitalism. That's why things like antitrust came to be. Unfortunately, folks have grown quite naive.
Saying capitalism will just work (the invisible hand) is as naive as those who think unfettered communism would work. In both scenarios, there is a tendency for powerful groups to capture the market.
I said the article in question, where a judge is telling people where they can and can not sell their labor, is the opposite of capitalism. Because it is.
How is it the opposite of capitalism? Capital is being allocated such that this happens, yes or no?
What you mean to say is this doesn't follow what you think capitalism should be, aka capitalism in theory. This is capitalism in practice, like it or not.
I don't think you're even communicating because you both have very different ideas of what "capitalism" even is. GP post will probably respond to you with something like "because it's literally the government interfering with a free market outcome" which is something libertarians basically want to minimize. Market freedom isn't a yes/no binary thing, you can have more intervention or less, and one could point out that both sides here seem to prefer the outcome with less intervention in this case.
But I'm not sure it matters since the headline is a flat-out lie. It looks like they will actually get to start at new jobs, at most the new company has to send one person (not necessarily any of these) to work at ThedaCare (while employed by the new company with new wages) so it can operate temporarily while the courts sort things out.
And ThedaCare has to pay their lawyers, compensate the new company for any use of their staff, hire new people, deal with the PR fallout of this (and probably no one wanting to work there), etc.
I guess, I do appreciate you responding. I just get frustrated when folks refuse to look at the downsides of a chosen path, regardless of that path (capitalism or whatever). Everything in practice is different from theory / idealism. That doesn't mean it isn't the thing, it just means that's reality.
But refusing to acknowledge that means we can't fix it. It implies we just need to lean more into capitalism (or whatever we want to call USA's goings ons) to fix it, when that's what got us here in the first place.
I think there's a nomenclature problem there, people who advocate for capitalism are arguing for more freedom (e.g. against interventions like this), so it sounds to them like it would if someone said "don't pee on the electric fence" and someone replied "we already have that rule, but people are peeing on it anyway and it's causing terrible wounds" and then they go "what? that's literally what we're saying not to do."
Then you can see why "well, it still happens anyway even in a system where that's a rule" leaves you kinda talking past each other.
I don't know I'm trying to explain it in basic terms. Capitalism favors whoever owns capital. Rules are an unavoidable part of participating in society, and thus it can follow that rules will tend to favor who owns capital.
Basically, it seems to me like capitalists throw up their hands and do the "no true scotsman" whenever something doesn't follow their theoretical thinking. Which honestly is exactly what you're doing. Oh, this doesn't track? Well, that's because it's not capitalism, we have a nomenclature problem. So just throw out the thing that we don't like?
Like it or not, capitalists, socialists, communists, etc. etc. all have to contend with the reality of their systems.
That's a purist view. Capitalism leads to captures / collusion among those who own capital, same with other systems like communism. Most are forced to work paycheck to paycheck, freedom for them is more of an illusion.
There is no provision capitalism for forbidding a laborer from selling their labor to a different employer. That concept does not even exist in capitalism.
And there's no provision in capitalism for forbidding "forbidding a laborer from selling their labor to a different employer".
Literally all capitalism is:
"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership and control of the means of production and their operation for profit."
Turns out if someone owns enough capital, they can do exactly what you claim is impossible in capitalism.
Ah, so it is possible in capitalism. Crazy how you've turned on a dime. And I can guarantee you it isn't the only legal way.
How much leverage by the way do you think a worker has in capitalism to _not_ sign a non compete? Are they not fairly standard in industries? Why do you think that is? Who does it benefit?
No, you misread. What the judge tried to do (and failed) is not possible in Capitalism. You can't force an employee to not work at a competitor. An employee who signs a non-compete agreement is not being forced to not work for a competitor.
Consent is a thing. As an analogy, you're saying if someone consents to sex, then rape is allowed as well.
I did not misread, I was responding to the non compete. It is literally possible. The judge thing, meh, it's kind of crazy that they still barred them from working for a while.
What the fuck are you even trying to say about consent? Just to humor you, forced coercion isn't consent. Most don't have the means to say no to a non compete. As a real analogy, it's like you as a boss asking a subordinate who needs a job to have sex with you. They reluctantly say yes, is that consent?
Maybe try and answer my questions instead of redirecting in a weird way.
How much leverage by the way do you think a worker has in capitalism to _not_ sign a non compete? Are they not fairly standard in industries? Why do you think that is? Who does it benefit?
Correct, because capitalism is an economic system, it is perfectly possible to run capitalism under a harsh dictatorship or a liberal democracy for that matter, thus laborer selling their labor to a different employer can either be allowed or disallowed, hence capitalism can never guarantee any economic freedom as previously claimed.
No, communism is a political system that normally has the economic system of planned economy, thus when you see a comparison between capitalism vs communism it is an apples to oranges comparison.
Under Soviet communism you couldn’t do what you propose but definitely under current Chinese communism.
That is a question of definition I guess, the state is controlled by a single party, the communist party and intertwined with the military, typical for communist system.
But regardless how you want to define China, it yet proves that capitalism by itself does not guarantee any freedoms at all.
There are other asian examples of this, like Singapore, Taiwan & South Korea.
This is on top of Wisconsin being an at-will state and there being no formal employment contract in this case. I'm not even sure how the judge is legally able to do this considering the material harm to employees.
There seems to be a lot of discussion on this at r/nursing