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Comment by syki | Hacker News Reader

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).

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> 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.

https://www.wbay.com/2022/01/20/thedacare-seeks-court-order-...

This may provide some more information.

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.

Is it really "group recruitment" if each of the people applied independently vs being recruited or "poached"?

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?

higher -> hire

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?

Company B can poach nurses back immediately.

You fail to understand the meaning of “if”. I was proposing a scenario where a company would plausibly be prevented from hiring certain people.

It’s not a realistic scenario. Not relevant to policy or judicial rulings.

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.

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