Strike
The scene to the left was part of the late night news last night. Fifteen hundred nurses, other professionals and technical workers from a large inner-city hospital in an area of Philadelphia where random shootings are frequent have gone on strike. As in, refusing to do their jobs. Not going to work.
In a time when unemployment is so high, when small businesses are closing right and left, when my friend told me yesterday that the company her husband works for is laying off 4000 people nationwide, these people are refusing to do their jobs.
The news reporter interviewed one woman who said that she was eating up her savings by being on strike. She actually has savings to squander as she refuses to do her job. Unlike another friend whose husband has been out of work for many months and is struggling to survive on unemployment compensation.
I have never had a lot of respect for people who go on strike. I've always thought, "If you don't like the conditions at the job you have, go work someplace else where you'll be happier."
In the current job market, maybe these nurses, other professionals, and technical workers would have a bit of a hard time finding a job where they'd be happier. But they are striking nonetheless. They are refusing to work. Possibly compromising the care and the lives of the patients in the hospital in this already depressed area of the city. Refusing to work at a job that they accepted, knowing the conditions of employment at the time they took the job. Choosing to march around carrying picket signs in a neighborhood where people would be grateful to have any job at all, much less a high-paying position that required a great deal of training.
Refusing to work.
I don't get it.
Comments
There certainly has to be an give and take for current economic conditions, but lets not just blame the union workers if the people who are in management have good conditions, pay and benefits. For example, when there was the big to-do about Detroit getting a bailout, much was made of the car factories in the south that were non-union. The workers there make about the same wage as the union workers, but didn't get very many benefits at all. And who can afford to buy health insurance entirely on one's own? It is no coincidence that the states that have the least strong worker protections and unions also have the poorest health care markers.
My son moved to a "Right to Work" state in the south. Right to Work apparently means that the unions don't have so much power, so that people can work without having to join unions. It also means that there are few protections for the workers. He called one day from work, upset over something that was being required of him (he is in management) and asked me to look it up on the web. The state's own website for labor said, basically, that a company can demand any hours, any length of work week, and the worker doesn't have to get time off for any personal reasons, on and on. I was shocked at how pro-business the laws are.
BTW, his first job there last summer was in a restaurant at minimum wage. Turns out that minimum wage for waiters is $2.13/hour. Plus, tips, of course, but the tips are counted toward the regular minimum wage. He said that few people paid even 10% in tips, as most people in the whole area earn only regular minimum wage for most jobs. In my first job at a restaurant 44 years ago, I earned $2.00/hour.
Strikes are very divisive, but in some cases, it is the only way for workers to get someone to listen.
Of course, I don't know the back story to the nurses situation and strike. It may be really galling to those getting high bills for their medical care to see these nurses striking. At it may well be that the nurses union is making sure that essential care is still being covered.
Miners in West Virginia have been screwed in spite of the unions and the mine owners have gotten away with murder more than once.
It's not the unions' fault that American Big Business has brought the country to this state. People should be fuming about Walal Street and not some workers who think their work is worth more. I guess we could jusy let'em eatr cake.
Actually, I know a little bit about work in inner city hospitals, having spent a couple of years as chaplain in two of them. I know the folks in the ERs are under great stress. Beyond that, the rest of the hospitals were much like the one in my middle class neighborhood.
If I wanted to write about Wall Street, I'd write about Wall Street. I really just don't want to get started on that.
Y'know, my pay increase last year was $480 and this year it is 1% again and I'm lucky to be getting a contract -- we've laid off people who are finding it very difficult to get another job because there are so many looking. These nurses are demanding free tuition for their children at the University the hospital is affiliated with. Refusing to go to work when so many people are out of work, compromising patient care in the process, because they think they should get what comes out to a $20,000 increase? Ma'am, I don't really think that has anything to do with eating cake.
You're generalizing where I'm talking about a very specific situation.
Maybe if those coal miners had gone on strike for better working conditions (they had good paychecks, which is one reason they didn't complain), the recent explosion wouldn't happen. Caution about attacking unions. When employees have no other recourse and can have no voice and work conditions are intolerable, they can strike and get someone's attention. Get the full story. Some unions have exhausted their usefulness. Some organizations should have them.
The beauty of the union is that it is the perfect contrast to employers. In a capitalist society employers correctly have the right to set pay and working conditions and hire their choice of employees. A single worker, especially in a poor economy, has little hope of changing the workplace. And they have little hope of being happier at another job since in many industries large employers tend to offer similar pay and benefits as their peers.
As you point out, "If you don't like the conditions at the job you have, go work someplace else where you'll be happier." Indeed. This group of workers was so unhappy with their job conditions, which they had hoped would soon improve, that they all did go someplace else. They chose to lose their paychecks over working. And the free market has enabled their employer to hire replacement workers – at a salary rate six times higher than the unionized staff.
It is crucial to consider exactly what pushes workers to go so far that they forgo their pay. Along with rejecting Temple’s last offer to double health care premiums for nurses, triple them for the technical/professional staff, and freeze wages for a year, this union is upset that Temple insists on a “non-disparagement” clause, which states that staff, “shall not publicly criticize, ridicule or make any statement which disparages or is derogatory of Temple.”
In the past, non-disparagement clauses of this ilk were designed to silence potential whistleblowers. What they really say is that if an employee finds unsafe conditions or nurse ratios that threaten patient safety, they are prohibited from speaking publicly about it. Obviously, they would be free to contact the appropriate regulator or authorities, who may shut down the hospital, begin an investigation, or do nothing. Meanwhile, as patients receive insufficient treatment, we are forced to wait for a government entity to determine that a practice is unsafe. Personally, I am fearful of my family receiving health care at a place that could be so awful the employees would like to speak out, but are prohibited from doing so. And I am skeptical of a company that is so afraid of its employees.