Employees at Rogers Behavioral Health in the nonprofit provider’s home state of Wisconsin approved unionization in an April 22 vote.
Sixty-three employees at Rogers Behavioral Health’s West Allis Behavioral Health Treatment Center and 33 employees at its Madison Behavioral Health Treatment Center will be represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
About 93% and 86% of the workers at the West Allis location and the Madison location, respectively, voted in favor of unionization. The NUHW already represents Rogers Behavioral Health employees at locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego.
“We acknowledge the union election outcomes in Madison and West Allis Lincoln Center,” a spokesperson for Rogers Behavioral Health told Behavioral Health Business. “We are evaluating our next steps in support of our system of care. We are committed to our patients, our people, and the integrated care that has made Rogers a trusted provider across Wisconsin since 1907.”
In early February, NUHW filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of workers at both locations after three clinicians claimed to have been fired by Rogers Behavioral Health over unionization efforts.
“It was clear from the outset that Rogers fired us to try to stop the union drive in Wisconsin even though it left patients with even fewer caregivers,” Stephani Lohman, a nurse practitioner, and one of the fired workers, told the NUHW previously.
On April 14, the National Labor Relations Board sided with the union and rejected arguments from Rogers Behavioral Health, ordering elections at both locations.
Two days before the April 22 elections, Rogers Behavioral Health filed a federal court case in Wisconsin’s Eastern District Court seeking a temporary restraining order to block the union elections. U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman of the Wisconsin Eastern District Court denied the motion at a status conference the morning before the NLRB held elections.
However, the judge left the preliminary-injunction fight open. Rogers Behavioral Health must file its brief by May 6, and defendants will have until May 20 to respond.
A study published by the University of California Los Angeles in early April found that unionization was linked to significantly lower turnover from direct care workers and suggests that broader unionization at both for-profit and nonprofit systems could save $1.5 billion per year in turnover costs.
However, a 2024 study that focused on medical residents found that union membership did not meaningfully improve burnout, suicidality or job satisfaction.
Unionization efforts in the behavioral health sector are still less mature than in other areas of health care, but initiatives to unionize are growing. Employees at Resilience Lab unionized in 2023 and in 2024, Bicycle Health employees became the first telehealth clinicians to unionize.
Last month, more than 2,400 mental health clinicians at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California went on a one-day strike over concerns about the health system’s use of AI.
A spokesperson for Kaiser Permanente previously told BHB that it is working toward negotiating a new contract with workers, but that “AI does not replace human assessment, and it does not make care decisions.”
Negotiations on that front remain ongoing.
Bob Funk – executive director of LaborLab, a nonprofit watchdog organization that tracks and investigates corporate spending on union-busting activities – told BHB there has been a notable increase in union efforts at behavioral health organizations.
He anticipates the industry will see more.
“I’ve definitely seen an uptick in behavioral health professionals organizing,” Funk said. “My guess would be that it’s still coming out of so much of the upheaval from the pandemic and the level of burnout and low pay and demand that these jobs have and retention issues.”