Case tackles new test for contracts with strike replacement companies in public health care settings

The California Court of Appeal has affirmed the Public Employment Relations Board’s ruling that the County of San Joaquin interfered with and discriminated against the protected activity of the California Nurses Association and its registered nurse members.

Under a 2019 contract between San Joaquin County and Healthsource Global Staffing, the staffing company would provide replacement workers during strikes by the California Nurses Association or by the service employees’ union, which represented technical workers and other employees of the San Joaquin General Hospital. The agreement had a minimum shift guarantee for replacement workers.

In 2021, the Public Employment Relations Board made the following findings:

• The county’s policy, which prohibited members from returning to work after a noticed strike, was conduct inherently destructive to the protected activity of the nurses’ association and its registered nurse members;
• The county failed to meet the standard in a new test that the Board announced and applied;
• These actions taken by the county also amounted to conduct inherently destructive to protected activity: its refusal to permit members from using accrued leave for the time they were banned from returning to work, its determination that the absences were unauthorized, and its disciplining of those members.

The Board ordered the county to allow members to use...

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