The writer, a Los Angeles freelancer and former Detroit News business reporter, writes a blog, Starkman Approved.
By Eric Starkman
Teamsters President Sean O'Brien
Tina Freese Decker, CEO of Grand Rapids-based Corewell Health, and Robert Riney, her counterpart at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, likely don’t know it yet — but Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien is poised to become their worst nightmare.
A very, very bad nightmare.
Both CEOs would be wise to stock up on their anesthesia supplies to help deal with the pain O’Brien and his Teamsters have repeatedly shown they know how to deliver. There’s good reason O’Brien delights in reminding folks that his initials are “SOB.”
Freese Decker already got a taste of O’Brien’s wrath last year when the Teamsters organized Corewell’s southeastern Michigan nurses by a landslide and then forced the hospital system to reverse its retaliatory denial of benefits to unionized staff.
Henry Ford’s Riney recently put a Teamsters bullseye on his back.
O’Brien is furious that Henry Ford Genesys in Grand Blanc turned away striking Teamsters nurses who returned to the hospital to help after the recent tragic shooting at a Mormon church. Multiple sources told me that the hospital was staffed with a new team of scab nurses working their first rotation when the shooting occurred.
The rejection energized the striking nurses, who are now pushing to unionize all of Henry Ford’s nurses — and organizers say the response has been strong. Henry Ford Genesys nurses have been on strike for a month, demanding safer staffing ratios and better pay.
Doesn't Play
O’Brien doesn’t play patty-cake with CEOs — especially those he doesn’t respect. Freese Decker is among those he holds in low regard.
Tina Freese Decker
In an interview with Deadline Detroit, O’Brien said Freese Decker epitomizes the low-caliber, overpaid executives who’ve turned American healthcare into a corporate cash machine. He accused Corewell of waging one of the fiercest anti-union campaigns the Teamsters have ever encountered in healthcare, a battle he says revealed the system’s “lightweight” leadership.
In 2023, the latest figures available, Freese Decker received $6.7 million in compensation, up from $4.5 million in 2022.
“Instead of wasting millions upon millions of dollars fighting unions, Corewell should embrace its employees and work with them to create real change,” O’Brien charged.
Studies show that when hospital nurses organize, patient care improves, and lives are saved. Nurses at Michigan Medicine, the state’s top-ranked hospital and considered among the best in the country, are unionized.
What especially angered O’Brien was a memo Freese Decker sent after instituting mass layoffs, invoking the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and suggesting she was influenced by the civil rights leader. MLK, who championed workers’ rights and died in Memphis while supporting striking sanitation workers, was made an honorary Teamster to mark the 55th anniversary of his assassination.
Out of Touch
“That just shows you how out of touch and ignorant Freese Decker is,” O’Brien said. “Martin Luther King fought for civil rights and equality — everything we fight for as a union. Freese Decker does the opposite. She’s a fraud at best.”
On Henry Ford Genesys’ decision to bar striking nurses from assisting after the church shooting, O’Brien issued a blistering follow-up statement after the incident:
“Henry Ford Genesys would rather blow thousands of dollars a week on scabs than pay their own nurses what they’ve earned,” O’Brien said. “This hospital is failing workers and putting patients at risk. Management has its priorities all wrong — they should be bargaining for guaranteed nurse-to-patient ratios, good wages, and safe working conditions.”
Henry Ford, in a statement to the Detroit Free Press, defended its decision:
“For security and patient privacy purposes, striking team members do not have access to our systems, including electronic medical records, nor are they able to access medications. That would make it impossible to provide patient care. Because of the indefinite strike, we’d already made alternative staffing arrangements. Henry Ford Genesys Hospital was appropriately staffed Sunday and team members were able to care for the patients from the church tragedy without additional help.”
Nurses Locked Out
A veteran emergency-room executive told me she didn’t buy Henry Ford’s explanation. Staff nurses, the executive noted, are instantly familiar with their hospital’s emergency protocols better than the traveling scab nurses who receive premium pay to cross picket lines and undermine efforts to improve nurse/patient staffing ratios, typically the number one issue for striking nurses.
“Hospital employees know their hospital 10,000 percent better than any outside nurse and absolutely should take care of a mass casualty incident,” said the executive, who understandably didn’t want to be quoted for fear of being blackballed by the tight-knit hospital industry. In addition to being CEO of Corewell, Freese Decker also is chair of the American Hospital Association, a trade group focused on promoting the interests of hospital management.
The Teamsters carry a reputation few unions can match because they combine reach, resilience, and tactical ruthlessness. They aren’t just a union — they’re a juggernaut. Their strength lies in three key advantages: cross-industry leverage, institutional muscle, and a proven track record of forcing CEOs to blink.
The Teamsters control — or influence — labor arteries that are indispensable to commerce: freight, logistics, supply chains, ports, and transit. If Corewell’s nurses were to strike, the Teamsters could mobilize their resources to cause considerable disruption.
O’Brien made clear the Teamsters will pull out all stops if Corewell’s nurses strike.
“We got a lot of levers we can pull with hospitals,” O’Brien said, noting that Teamsters union members provide some critical services, including picking up the trash and delivering medical supplies. O’Brien said Corewell’s nurses are fearless and are ready to “take to the streets if need be.”
Impressive Strides
The Teamsters have already made impressive strides in Michigan. They represent the outsourced nurse anesthetists from Dallas-based NorthStar Anestheisa assigned to Corewell Royal Oak, many of them former employees of the former Beaumont Health when management pawned them off to NorthStar. The nurse anesthetists immediately organized and formed their own union but subsequently opted to join the more powerful Teamsters.
NorthStar’s nurse anesthetists speak highly of the Teamsters, which is why Corewell’s nurses opted to hook up with the union. Whereas the Michigan Nurses Association failed to successfully organize nurses at Beaumont Royal Oak in 2019, the Teamsters last year organized the nurses at all Corewell’s southeastern Michigan hospitals by an overwhelming margin.
Underscoring the cluelessness of Corewell’s management, spokesman Mark Geary told the Detroit News prior to the vote that the hospital system was confident that most of its Detroit-area nurses didn’t want a union. Geary didn’t respond to a weekend email request for comment about O’Brien’s criticisms.
Katherine Wallace, a bargaining representative and union steward for nurses at Corewell Troy, credited the Teamsters’ organizing prowess for the successful union drive. Corewell’s Teamsters nurses are navigating their first union contract to improve staffing ratios, better pay and improved benefits.
“We have every confidence in the Teamsters and the empowerment they enabled in us,” Wallace said. She added that Corewell’s management continuously spreads false information to frighten nurses, which takes considerable time and effort to counter.
Henry Ford Health President and CEO Robert G. Riney
Henry Ford Genesys was already unionized when Henry Ford Health acquired the hospital system a year ago. The hospital’s nurses have been on strike for a month and have received considerable support from the community.
“The outpouring of support has been amazing,” Dan Glass, president of the Teamsters local representing the striking nurses, told me.
One strident supporter is Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson, a licensed medic who teaches healthcare at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan and a card-carrying member of the American Federation of Teachers.
“I stand with the Henry Ford nurses at Genesys,” said Swanson, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate running to replace Gretchen Whitmer next year. “Nurses are the baseline of any hospital system.”
Swanson said he was troubled by the high number of patients Henry Ford Genesys nurses are expected to care for, with one picket-line nurse telling him she was expected to care for 11 patients on her last shift before going on strike.
Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson
Although still in the early stages, organizers are encouraged by the strength of the response they’ve received from Henry Ford’s nurses interested in becoming Teamsters.
“We are going to change healthcare in Michigan and make it better for everyone,” said Lisa Pastue, an organizing nurse at Henry Ford Warren. “The Teamsters are going to lead us there.”
If O’Brien has his way, Michigan’s hospital bosses are about to learn that you don’t pick a fight with an SOB unless you’re ready to get mighty bloodied.
Contact Eric Starkman at eric@starkmanapproved. Anonymity assured.
