According to a tweet from the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD), the residents and fellows of Loma Linda voted to join a labor union yesterday. The vote was 361 to 144 in favor of joining the union.
Note that the union received only 361 votes out of a possible of 805 – well less than half. However, the union won the election because it only needed to win 50% + 1 of those who vote. On that scale, it won about 70% of the vote.
Beginning in February 2023, residents at Loma Linda argued that they are overworked and underpaid (typical Union rhetoric). On February 24, the dissatisfied residents were joined in a press conference by a California state senator (Richard Pan, D-Sacramento) supporting their desire to unionize.
Loma Linda University Health denied employee requests in February, citing lack of funds. They also said that the government can’t interfere due to their religious affiliation. They claimed that the church has a long-standing teaching against joining labor unions. While this is true, it is also true that Loma Linda University is separated from the church by their own board and organizational structure.
Loma Linda also argued that residents are students and not actual employees and therefore don't have the right to unionize. However, in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an IRS requirement that medical residents pay social security taxes, and were classified as employees.
Thus, Loma Linda failed to stop the unionization process. The vote to unionize passed on Thursday, June 22, 2023.
Commentary
This unionization significantly undermines the spiritual purpose of LLU and Adventist Health and has ramifications for other ‘SDA’ institutions.
This vote to unionize could affect all LLU doctors. It could also call into question the ‘open shop’ status of Advent Health and other quasi-SDA medical institutions.
“Those who claim to be the children of God are in no case to bind up with the labor unions that are formed or that shall be formed. This the Lord forbids. Cannot those who study the prophecies see and understand what is before us? The transgressors of the law of God have taken sides with their Leader, the General of rebellion. He understands how to devise his Satanic schemes and through whom to work for the carrying out of them. He is striving to lead every soul to take sides with him, and under the influence of his temptations, thousands are binding themselves up in bundles, ready to be consumed by the fires of the last day” (4MR 78).
The American dream used to be that a person would put in an honest day’s work, doing the best job he could for an honest day’s wages. The (union) mindset today is “I want to get as much as I can for as little effort as possible.”
While we sympathize with Loma Linda in this situation, in our opinion Loma Linda University Health would have a better religious exemption argument if the institution had not drifted measurably from the original faith of the Seventh-day Adventist Movement.
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“The work of the people of God is to prepare for the events of the future, which will soon come upon them with blinding force. In the world gigantic monopolies will be formed. Men will bind themselves together in unions that will wrap them in the folds of the enemy. A few men will combine to grasp all the means to be obtained in certain lines of business. Trades unions will be formed, and those who refuse to join these unions will be marked men” (2SM 142)