Philadelphia Ass'n of Interns & Residents v. Albert Einstein Medical Center

369 A.2d 711, 470 Pa. 562, 1976 Pa. LEXIS 793
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJuly 6, 1976
Docket6
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 369 A.2d 711 (Philadelphia Ass'n of Interns & Residents v. Albert Einstein Medical Center) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Philadelphia Ass'n of Interns & Residents v. Albert Einstein Medical Center, 369 A.2d 711, 470 Pa. 562, 1976 Pa. LEXIS 793 (Pa. 1976).

Opinions

OPINION OF THE COURT

O’BRIEN, Justice.

This appeal arises from an order of the Commonwealth Court which reversed the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board and the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, in which the two tribunals held that interns, residents and clinical-fellows, members of the Philadelphia [565]*565Association of Interns and Residents, one of the appellants herein, who perform services at the appellee-hospitals, are employees within the meaning of the Public Employe Relations Act, Act of July 23, 1970, P.L. 563. No. 195, art. I, § 101, 43 P.S. § 1101.101, et seq., hereinafter called “Act 195”.

Initially, we must point out that, in our opinion, the appellant-employees of Albert Einstein Medical Center and Albert Einstein Medical Center itself no longer come within the purview of Act 195, but rather are covered under the “Labor Management Relations Act, 1947”, Act of June 23, 1947, c. 120, § 1, 61 Stat. 136, 29 U.S.C.A., § 141, et seq. (Labor Management Act). In 1947, when the Labor Management Act was amended to redefine the terms used therein, § 152, Definitions, read as follows:

“(2) The term ‘employer’ includes any person acting as an agent of an employer, directly or indirectly, but shall not include the United States or any wholly owned Government corporation, or any Federal Reserve Bank, or any State or political subdivision thereof, or any corporation or association operating a hospital, if no part of the net earnings inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, or any person subject to the Railway Labor Act, as amended. .” (Emphasis supplied.)

Under the terms of § 152 of the Labor Management Act, excluded from the term “employer” was any private nonprofit hospital and any hospital run by the state. Albert Einstein Medical Center is a nonprofit private hospital, and, therefore, excluded from the term “employer” in the Labor Management Act. If Albert Einstein Medical Center is excluded under the Labor Management Act, its employees would, therefore, be eligible to organize under state labor relations legislation as the interns, residents and clinical-fellows (hereinafter called appellants) attempted to do in January, 1970, under Act 195. However, during the time that the personnel of Albert Ein[566]*566stein Medical Center filed under Act 195 and the time this appeal arose, the Congress of the United States amended the Labor Management Act, § 152, Definitions, to read as follows:

“(1) The term ‘person’ includes one or more individuals, labor organizations, partnerships, associations, corporations, legal representatives, trustees, trustees in bankruptcy, or receivers.
“(2) The term ‘employer’ includes any person acting as an agent of an employer, directly or indirectly, but shall not include the United States or any wholly owned Government corporation, or any Federal Reserve Bank, or any State or political subdivision thereof, or any person subject to the Railway Labor Act, as amended from time to time, or any labor organization (other than when acting as an employer), or anyone acting in the capacity of officer or agent of such labor organization.” (Emphasis supplied.)

Section 152 of the Labor Management Act, as amended in July of 1974, specially eliminated from its exclusion of defined employers, private nonprofit hospitals, such as appellee herein, Albert Einstein Medical Center; thus, on its face, § 152 of the Labor Management Act now includes as employers, hospitals such as appellee, Albert Einstein Medical Center. The legislative history surrounding the amendment of § 152 of the Labor Management Act reinforces the contention that private nonprofit hospitals are, since the 1974 amendment, covered by the Labor Relations Act. The legislative history clearly indicates § 152 was amended to bring within its purview employees of private, nonprofit hospitals. See 2 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin.News 1975, pp. 3946-3947.

Since the amendment to § 152 of the Labor Management Relations Act was intended to include employers such as appellee, Albert Einstein Medical Center, and since this amendment pre-empts the field of labor [567]*567law regarding private nonprofit hospitals’ employer-employee relationships, the issue of the status of the appellants who are employed at Albert Einstein Medical Center is now moot. Our decision as to the mootness of appellee Albert Einstein Medical Center in no way controls our decision on the issue of whether appellants who are at Temple Medical Center are employees within the meaning of Act 195, since this decision is purely a matter of state labor law.

We must now turn to the question of whether the interns, residents and clinical-fellows at Temple University Hospital are public employees within the meaning of Act 195. Since there is no dispute that Temple University is a public employer under § 301(1) of Act 195, 43 P. S. § 1101.301, we must look to see how Act 195, in § 301(2), 43 P.S. § 1101.301(2), defines public employee:

“(2) ‘Public employe’ or ‘employe’ means any individual employed by a public employer . . . .”

This very broad definition in § 301(2) sheds little light on what constitutes a public employee. Nor does the scant case law surrounding Act 195. In Sweet v. Pa. L. R. B., 457 Pa. 456, 322 A.2d 362 (1974), this court had its first opportunity to define who was an employer under Act 195, but did not define what is a public employee since in Sweet it was undisputed that the court personnel involved in the appeal were public employees.

In the instant case, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board and the Court of Common Pleas found the interns, residents and clinical-fellows of Temple University to be public employees within the meaning of Act 195 because of certain indicia of employee status. The two tribunals held that appellants were employees because (1) they spent eighty-five to ninety percent of their time in patient-care service, (2) they were paid wages that were subject to federal income tax, (3) only ten to fifteen percent of their time was spent in formal classroom instruc[568]*568tion, and (4) that many other terms of their relationship with appellee Temple University carried indicia of employee status.

While accepting the findings of fact of the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, we, as did the Commonwealth Court, find that because of their unique position and status, appellants are not employees within the meaning of Act 195. The interns, residents and clinical-fellows at Temple University are at Temple not for the primary purpose of obtaining monetary remuneration, but rather to fulfill educational requirements. The interns are required by state law to serve a year of internship at an approved hospital in order to be admitted to the practice of medicine, which is, in essence, a fifth year of medical school. See “The Medical Practice Act of 1973," July 20, 1974, P.L. 551 No. 190, § 1, et seq., 63 P. S. § 421.1, et seq. and Title 49, Pennsylvania Code, § 17.-11(f).

The residents who are at hospitals such as Temple are medical doctors admitted to practice, but who wish to specialize in a certain field of medicine and be certified by the medical association as specialists. The residency requirement is an integral step in the obtaining of board certification as a specialist and, again, this training can only be obtained at an approved hospital, such as Temple. See Title 49, Pennsylvania Code, § 17.41.

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Philadelphia Ass'n of Interns & Residents v. Albert Einstein Medical Center
369 A.2d 711 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1976)

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Bluebook (online)
369 A.2d 711, 470 Pa. 562, 1976 Pa. LEXIS 793, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/philadelphia-assn-of-interns-residents-v-albert-einstein-medical-center-pa-1976.