About 300 Mass General Brigham Primary Care Physicians File NLRB Petition to Unionize

Nearly 300 primary care physicians at Mass General Brigham filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board indicating their intent to unionize.

According to the representation petition, the group would include “all full-time, part-time, and per diem academic physicians practicing primary care” at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

If the representation petition is approved or workers and the employer reach an agreement, an election will be held, with a simple majority required for unionization.

The union would join the Doctors’ Council, a national affiliate of Services Employees International Union that represents over 2 million healthcare workers. In order to file a representation petition, at least 30 percent of eligible workers in a prospective bargaining unit must sign union cards.

“We have two options as primary care doctors, as physicians here at Mass General,” Carl P. Malm ’12 — primary care physician at Mass General — said. “Have a seat at the table via a union, or not have a seat at the table where decisions are made about our conditions of work, about our conditions of practice.”

In March, MGB announced the integration of the clinical and academic teams at Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Malm said this change has led to a bulky bureaucracy and high staff turnover, which hinder doctors’ ability to provide patient care.

“The moral injury associated with it becomes too much, and that’s why we see so many of our colleagues either leaving Mass General, academic medicine, or medicine altogether,” he said.

“When things change, we’re the ones that have to answer to patients in our visits,” Malm added. “We’re the ones that have to, again, bear that moral injury.”

In an emailed statement to The Crimson, a spokesperson for MGB wrote that “we know that PCPs across the Commonwealth are facing unprecedented volume and stress as a result of a confluence of factors that are not unique to our organization.”

“We are committed to continuing our dialogue with our PCPs, supporting them and their practices through this challenging time and investing in ways to reduce burden,” the spokesperson added.

If successful, the primary care physicians would join residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham who voted to unionize as MGB Housestaff United in June 2023. The union is currently bargaining for its first contract.

BWH Pathology resident Lee P. Richman, a bargaining committee member for MGB Housestaff United, said he expects the primary care physicians to encounter anti-union messaging from employers.

“There’ll be a lot of fearmongering, because this is going to cost them maybe a lot of money, and so they want to try to avoid this election,” Richman said.

Richman said if primary care physicians unionize, they may face difficulty bargaining for a contract.

“The way MGB has been negotiating with us, they play hardball,” Richman said. “I think MGB is scared of unions and wants to kind of try to demonstrate that they don’t accomplish much.”

Per Malm, though MGB doctors have the option of leaving the hospital system, they have “strong attachments” to their institutions.

“This is not the path of easiest resistance,” Malm said. “But we love the work we do.”

“We want to be closer to the people that our patients think we are,” he said.

According to Richman, the new primary care physician unionization effort will also help MGB Housestaff United in its contract negotiations.

“We are rallying our members,” Richman said. “We’re getting people excited about what we can accomplish and this is just further evidence that workers can make a difference.”

“This is our way of doctors taking back corporate medicine,” he added.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.

—Staff writer Aran Sonnad-Joshi can be reached at aran.sonnad-joshi@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @asonnadjoshi.