The Doctors Council, a union representing 2,500 salaried doctors at New York City hospitals, announced yesterday that it was merging with the larger Service Employees International Union as part of a plan to accelerate efforts to unionize doctors nationwide.

Under the merger agreement, the Doctors Council – most of whose members are post-residency attending physicians at the city’s municipal hospitals __ will begin a campaign to unionize physicians in other states, helped by the larger union’s pledge to spend $1 million a year on the effort.

Barry Liebowitz, president of the Doctors Council, said one priority would be to press for legislation in New York State and elsewhere that would make managed-care organizations liable if they overrule doctors’ decisions and patients are hurt as a result.

At a news conference announcement the merger, Dr. Liebowitz and other union leaders said repeatedly that doctors’ unions would fight as much to improve patient care as to increase doctors’ wages and benefits.

"Medicine has been infected by a big-business mentally," said Dr. Liebowitz, a pediatrician. "Hospitals are merging and downsizing. Profit-driven managed-care companies and corporate administrators are dictating medical treatments to protect the bottom line. For the sake of our profession and for the sake of patients everywhere, this must stop.

With the merger, the Doctors Council becomes the third medical union in the Service Employees International Union, which now includes 15,000 doctors, making it the nation’s largest representative of doctors. The service employees union has created a new umbrella group, the National Doctors Alliance, comprising the Doctors Council, the Committee of Interns and Residents, and United Salaried Physicians and Dentists.

In 1997, the Committee of Interns and residents, which is based in New York and represents 9,000 doctors joined the service employees union which has 1.3 million members, 600,000 of whom are in health care.

Andrew L. Stern, president of the service employees union, said it would make a big push to unionize not just interns and residents, but also salaried physicians. Doctors in private practice are usually considered independent contractors who are prohibited by law from bargaining collectively.

Labor leaders say many doctors are interested in unionization because they are angry about stagnating salaries and stepped-up restrictions imposed by hospitals and managed-care organizations.

"Nearly 50 percent of practicing physicians in the United States are now in salaried positions, making them eligible to join unions,," said John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.- C.I.O. " they need unions because the upheaval in the health-care industry is affecting other health-care workers."

Dr. Liebowitz said the union would not rule out calling strikes. He said it would be hard to justify doctors’ striking over economic issues, but he said a strike might be appropriate to prevent reduced quality of care –closing a cardiology and neurology department to cut costs, for example.

"Sometimes it is better to strike than to allow patients to go into a substandard facility," he said.