There’s supposedly a desperate need for nurses in this country. The demand is so great, we’re told, nurses have their choice of jobs and the money and benefits are flowing.
So why the heck are nurses going on strike!?
At 7 a.m. EST today, the nurses and other health care workers set up picket lines outside of Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.
The 1,500 members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals went on strike because, they say, the hospital’s management was bargaining in “bad faith.”
Wow, the hospital administrators have balls given the demand for health care workers. Or is the much-hyped growing demand for health care workers, hyped by labor experts, the media, and even me on occasion, just a bunch of bull?
Basic economics tell us, if there’s a shortage of a certain type of worker those workers in that particular field have the upper hand.
Is the management at Temple just dumb, or just a bunch of greedy bastards, or is the demand not as great as everyone has been touting.
The Temple health care workers have some basic demands, according to Philly.com, the website for the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper:
Points of contention between the two sides are pay raises, the cost of health insurance, tuition benefits for employees’ children, a gag clause that prevents employees from publicly criticizing Temple and random drug testing.
These demands should be easy for these sought-after workers to win, no?
Well, turns out they are not. The nurses, et al., have been without a contract since September.
The parities involved have even been working with a state mediator to no avail.
The Philadelphia Business Journal quoted Sandra L. Gomberg, interim executive director and CEO at Temple University Hospital, as saying:
The hospital’s “last, best” offer — rejected by the union Monday night — called for no increase for the nurses in the first year of a four-year deal, followed by annual increases of 2, 2 and 2.5 percent. Gomberg said the union is seeking increases of 3, 3.5, 4 and 4 percent over the four years.
According to Gomberg, Temple nurses earn on average $39.80 an hour, which she said is among the highest rates in the city. She said the union’s demands don’t reflect the current economic environment.
Hospital management thinks they have enough leverage not to give in to the workers’ demands.
So what’s the deal. The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported: Employment of registered nurses is expected to grow by 22 percent from 2008 to 2018, much faster than the average for all occupations.
But maybe the numbers don’t tell the real story.
This from a Kaiser Health News story:
Not so long ago, nursing school grads had it much easier. Job opportunities exploded during the past decade. Facing a shortage of nurses, hospitals were eager to hire qualified nurses. No matter their specialty, nurses were virtually guaranteed a job wherever they pleased.
Nursing, even in hard times, was thought to be recession-proof.
That was before the recent economic collapse. Before current nurses who are hoping to ride out the recession put off retirement or filled full-time jobs – rather than convenient part-time work – to increase their incomes.
Nurses are facing many pressures, according to labor professor Gary Chaison from the Graduate School of Management at Clark University at Worcester, MA.
“Because they represent a major cost factor in running hospitals, there are pressures to reduce their role, to deskill them by having much of what they do assigned to lesser skilled lower paid workers, particularly orderlies and practical nurses,” he said.
“The nurses’ motto is ‘Every patient deserves a nurse’, meaning every patient should have the services of a qualified RN, not someone who was assigned RN work to cut costs,” he continued. “They also realize that with the new health care legislation there will be attempts by non-professionals (managers and accountants) to cut the pay of nurses, to assign mandatory overtime, and to take over staffing decisions that should belong to nurses as health care professions. It’s the classic fight between the ‘bean-counters (administrators) and professionals.”
As for why the nurses can’t get what they want, he said:
“I believe it’s an issue of gender and the nurses’ mission. Quite often management will take advantage of the willingness to serve and sacrifice and the reluctance to speak of nurses.
“Nurses are trained to serve (they were once called the ‘doctors’ handmaiden) and as a result hospital management often feel they can get nurses to accept low pay, long hours because nursing is a calling, an occupation for those willing to sacrifice. And because nurses are often women, hospital management often feel that nurses will not be assertive or ask for a strong voice (union representation) at work.”
Well, the Temple nurses must have manned up. They are out on a picket line right now.
So, I suppose, nursing may not be the surefire career we’ve all touted it to be. Or maybe these things just ebb and flow.
If overall, health care workers are truly in demand, the Temple strike is an ominous sign for labor, because if the workers there can’t get what they want is there hope for anyone else?
March 31st, 2010 at 9:32 am
Health care reform will continue to put tremendous pressure on healthcare providers to reduce their costs. Adding staff is not a way to reduce costs. The only way they will reduce costs is if they keep payroll relatively level, or have it grow at a slower rate than the growth in demand for their services. It’s not going to be a pretty decade for the healthcare industry.
March 31st, 2010 at 9:51 am
“…The Temple strike is an ominous sign for labor.”
What? You say ominous sign as if it is a warning to other professions who might, in the future, feel the effects of corporate greed - i.e. fattening up profits via decimating workers salaries and benefits. All other sectors have already experienced this and been mostly destroyed by such managerial bullying. Nurses are just beginning to feel the wrath of corporate America, in the way others have been feeling it for years.
What small bit of life was left in labor organizations was crushed by the Bush administration. You do realize that many, many people (even men) over the last few years ran to the nursing profession to try and protect themselves from reversals of decades-old labor laws that once guaranteed such things as paid overtime to even the lowest of unskilled laborers (not anymore). You do realize that the nursing profession has been over-run, and that there are finally - despite what economic forecasters say - too many nurses, and that is why management is playing it’s hand now. They know these nurses can be easily replaced now.
It’s the end-game of a social and economic policy that started in the late 80’s, when every politician, policy maker, and high school guidance counselor chanted the mantra that “You have to go to college to get a job.” What a crock that turned out to be. Yes, almost everybody who could did go to college, and the market was flooded with thousands of educated young people all fighting for the same, few positions that were available. Wages came down, while tuition went up. As a result, the gap between cost for higher education and the pay-back via a decent job with a decent wage became wider than the Grand Canyon. Now, it’s more common for newly graduated students to be unemployed or underemployed than to be beginning fecund careers in their chosen fields.
The policy makers knew all along this was going to happen, and they promoted the great surge towards higher education - rather than directing people towards technical or vocations schools, or trades - because they knew it would eventually create a glut in the employee market, and that they would be able to pay less while requiring people to do more. It was all a set-up, orchestrated by the corporate interests who run government via lobbyists. It was the perfect way to make the job market more competitive, workers less demanding, and profits (their bank accounts) more definite. Combine that with jobs disappearing overseas - thanks to goofy ideas like NAFTA and the cult of globalism - and you have the perfect scenario for gutting the middle-class, while fattening up the rich even more.
It was all, like always, a function of greed. America’s one, true God.
The current problems nurses are experiencing are nothing more than the final chapter in this sad tale. I hate it for them, but they were the last survivors anyway.
March 31st, 2010 at 10:47 am
Ether you make some very sad and true points.
But we also have to realize that while worker rights under the Bush administration took big hits, things haven’t gotten that much better yet under Obama. During the past two years workers have been furloughed, wage and hour violations have skyrocketed, average pay for workers has flat-lined, and a growing number of employers are using contract workers so they don’t have to commit to workers or pay benefits, and lots of people are even working for free labor in so-called internships.
Things won’t change if workers don’t demand change.
Coincidentally, my column next week on MSNBC.com will be about more people going into the trades and vocational jobs. A lot of people are sick and tired of Corporate America using workers as pawns in their greed game.
March 31st, 2010 at 12:46 pm
I’ll look forward to your next column. Although I’m about to finish a M.A. program, I’ve actually been thinking about becoming a carpenter, or even taking a job working electrical poles and lines. I’d much rather be outdoors, and have become quite tired of the axe and grind mentality that pervades our business culture.
Honestly, though, the thought of needing to join a union to get a decent job in those trades really bothers me. They’ve served an important role in the past, and may yet serve an important role today and in the future, but I feel they’ve become too much self-perpetuating enterprises of their own–more worried about the survival of the union than they are about the workers themselves. My fathers and brothers have all worked union and it has been a mixed bag for them. The thing I like least is that unions seem designed to oppose the concept of rewarding exceptional workers. I have too many stories where union stewards told high-performing workers to slow down because they made the rest of the crew look bad.