Twenty-Three Workers, One Micro-Unit Fight
An NLRB regional director just cleared the way for 23 radiation therapists at Stanford Health Care to vote on joining an existing SEIU unit.
This is an Armour-Globe “self-determination” election, where a small group votes on whether to be absorbed into a larger bargaining unit. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West petitioned to add the therapists to a unit it already represents.
The employer fought it on community-of-interest grounds, and the record was genuinely mixed. The therapists have no interchange with unit employees, don’t share a common supervisor below the vice-president level, and out-earn most of the unit ($74 to $108 an hour versus $28 to $58). But the director found extensive day-to-day contact, shared trainings and policies, and heavy functional integration with unit staff, enough to direct the election.
Details matter enormously in these cases. Who supervises whom, who works beside whom, who shares a break room, these facts decide unit scope.
For employers, the lesson is old but constant: small, tightly integrated groups can be swept into existing units, one micro-group at a time.
Is your org chart your bargaining map?