Practices: Labor and Employment (Healthcare)

Hospitals and hospital systems, nursing homes, surgical centers and other healthcare providers are highly labor-intensive and have the same employment law challenges and responsibilities as employers do in many other industries. Yet they also have unique relationships between administration, employees and medical staff that result in specialized workplace issues. Your organization needs labor and employment counsel who understand the law and the industry, to keep you from unwittingly running afoul of the law – or from facing an unsupported allegation of misconduct.

Healthcare Focus

With our strong focus on representing hospitals and other health care providers, Ungaretti & Harris knows how to identify the problems that can become employment lawsuits, and works to prevent problems or resolve controversies in the most effective way possible. If you are faced with an employment controversy, we’ll work to resolve it – and are committed to giving you a tough, aggressive, but cost-effective defense against employment-related claims before regulators and in court.

Healthcare providers have a range of labor and employment concerns that are as wide-ranging as the many federal and state laws and regulations under which you operate. We can advise you on any of them, but focus our efforts in areas that we believe are your greatest potential concerns:

• Proactive counsel to ensure that internal policies and procedures comply with the law.
• Vigorous help in to deal with existing labor unions or to remain union-free.
• Wage and hour compliance and claims.
• Discrimination and harassment allegations of every type – age, race, gender, disability.
• Workplace safety issues unique to healthcare providers.
• Medical staff concerns.
• Workplace torts, from defamation to violation of non-compete agreements.

Proactive Counseling

The best approach to employment law problems is to keep them from occurring. Our lawyers will help you develop and implement a sound strategy for administering your personnel relationships in a way that identifies potential problems before they become concerns. You get asked the right questions about your current compliance policies, in order to find areas that may be out of date or need improvement. The goal is to help you eliminate the problems, and avoid the risk, and the key to that is developing personnel policies that meet all legal requirements and minimize your likelihood of employment-related claims and lawsuits. You get a review and revision of your existing policies and procedures, and training to help your supervisors effectively implement the policies.

Labor Relations

Whether you currently deal with third party representation, or seek to maintain a workplace free of such involvement, our low-profile but highly effective labor relations counsel can be crucial to helping you maintain a competitive workplace while minimizing conflicts and maximizing your management flexibility. If you face a union organizing drive, count on receiving help to maintain a positive working environment and comply with National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election law, while countering aggressive unionizing efforts. The clients who have successfully benefited from them include:

• A Chicago hospital in a two-year organizing battle with the Operating Engineers Union.
• A central Illinois nursing home in a contest against the Service International Union.
• A west coast health maintenance organization in a union’s “corporate campaign” that involved public relations, litigation, and labor disruption.

In unionized workplaces, you get a highly skilled and responsive partner that works alongside your human and labor relations personnel to handle collective bargaining, respond to grievance and arbitration actions, and represent you in NLRB proceedings. You also get help with such contentious issues as reductions in force, drug testing, discipline proceedings and strikes.

Responsiveness, innovation and focus are what set our labor relations counsel apart from that of other law firms. You get immediate response to all your questions and inquiries, with round-the-clock availability in crisis situations like strikes or TRO proceedings. You benefit from innovative solutions in which effective negotiation solves many disputes short of litigation.

Wage and Hour

Healthcare providers increasingly face litigation by employees suing for back overtime pay—and millions of dollars in damages—claiming violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Properly classifying and categorizing employees is crucial to your ability to comply with the law and avoid litigation. We audit your existing job descriptions, salary policies and pay practices to make sure they conform to FLSA requirements. If you are faced with a wage and hour lawsuit we mount a vigorous defense, seeking to deny class certification and working to secure an efficient and effective settlement that dismisses unfounded claims and protects your interests.

Discrimination and Harassment

Any protected class of your employees – by age, race, gender, disability, religion – could bring suit under the discrimination statues, and we have successfully litigated and resolved all types of discrimination matters. We have a special focus in sexual harassment controversies, and know how best to document your efforts at creating a positive working environment. We’ll defend you in state and federal court, in administrative actions before the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and in actions before the Illinois Department of Human Rights and state regulators across the country. A key aspect of that defense is careful preparation of your personnel so that they are confident and credible witnesses.

Workplace Safety

In addition to ensuring your compliance with standard Occupational Health and Safety Act requirements, we help you deal with such specialized safety issues in the medical workplace as exposure to bloodborne pathogens, needlestick injuries (including requirements of the federal Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act) and other medical sharps, and latex products. And because OSHA establishes retaliation protection for whistleblowers, we provide vigorous defense to show that your actions as an employer were proper – such as defending a pharmaceutical against claims that it did not maintain the integrity of clinical test data.

Medical Staff

Whether the issue is representation at staff hearings, drafting and reviewing staff bylaws, credentialing, or corrective actions, your medical staff concerns will be handled by lawyers who fully understand the professional and regulatory concerns involved.

Workplace Torts

Your organization might face tort allegations involving everything from workplace defamation to infliction of emotional distress to violation of non-compete agreements. In these and many other controversies, we’ll defend you in administrative forums and in state or federal court. A representative success is the successful jury trial defense, upheld on appeal, of two hospital supervisors sued for workplace defamation by a lab technician.

Responsive Help

Labor and employment issues often involve high stakes and intense time pressure. Any problem that arises could quickly grow if not quickly and properly addressed. That’s why, when you call, we’ll respond – promptly and without fail. Issues like sexual harassment and workplace violence demand immediate attention, and we provide it. We think proactively, frequently can identify potentially major issues when they’re small, and work to defuse them. You get focused guidance from a team that resolves problems by working behind the scenes, responding only to you and accomplishing your objectives quietly but effectively.