Why Doctors and Pharmacists Are in Revolt
Why Doctors and Pharmacists Are in Revolt
Once accustomed to a status outside the usual management-labor hierarchy, many health professionals now feel as put upon as any clock-punching worker.
Dr. John Wust does not come off as a labor agitator. A longtime obstetrician-gynecologist from Louisiana with a penchant for bow ties, Dr. Wust spent the first 15 years of his career as a partner in a small business — that is, running his own practice with colleagues.
Long after he took a position at Allina Health, a large nonprofit health care system based in Minnesota, in 2009, he did not see himself as the kind of employee who might benefit from collective bargaining.
But that changed in the months leading up to March, when his group of more than 100 doctors at an Allina hospital near Minneapolis voted to unionize. Dr. Wust, who has spoken with colleagues about the potential benefits of a union, said doctors were at a loss on how to ease their unsustainable workload because they had less input at the hospital than ever before.
“The way the system is going, I didn’t see any other solution legally available to us,” Dr. Wust said.
Absolutely. Unionize. Doctors should unionize. Accountants should unionize. Graphic designers should unionize. Everyone should unionize except the executives that have to bargain with the unions.
124How people can’t understand that unions do a lot of good is beyond me
66"It's easier to fool a man than to convince him he'd been fooled."
Crazy how accurate Mark Twain was about the United States even way back then.
22Or bad experiences with a union. I've personally seen Unions do good things, I've seen them have bad effects, and I've seen them cause frankly ridiculous delays with their rules and lack of coordination with other unions. I think theoretically Unions are a great idea, but we've all seen things like Police Unions make it impossible to get rid of bad cops, and otherwise protect people who I believe no normal person would say should keep their job.
9Police unions aren't helping
7At my job years ago they had a required training that was watching a video that was essentially anti union propaganda.
They had two managers discussing the need for a new supervisor position opening up, and discussing two qualified candidates. Then a third guy (poorly dressed and obnoxious personality) comes in and says they have to promote this other guy, due to union rules. The managers exclaim that guy barely ever comes to work and when he does has very poor performance, but Obnoxious Union Guy insists their hands are tied and they must promote him.
End Scene.
Now, good employee forced to watch this video, can't you see how unions are bad?? And YOU have to pay a fee to essentially destroy the company so we go under and you have to get a new job! Be a good little employee and keep working hard and forget the word Union exists.
7How does that work for smaller businesses? Legit asking.
I'm pro-union, but with a whopping...7 employees on good day, I'm struggling to see how bringing in a union would help without having massive overhead cost due to the lack of quantity being paid in.
My company already pays as much as it can back to the employees (I am the lowest paid employee, as the owner, at what amounts to a $1 salary), we pay as much as we can afford towards health benefits, we reimburse a portion of home internet and cell, and we do a lot that results in free meals and other gifts for employees.
That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a union if it improved morale, but I am just struggling to understand where they would add the best value for the cost. I don't want my employees to suffer, but frankly if union dues cost like...I don't know, $3500/mo, I'd much rather just split that money across the employees to pocket on their own.
edit: To the people down voting, I would legitimately love to hear why. And am looking for feedback on how you think I should fix the situation.
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Actually, the executives should probably also unionise, it will help normalise negotiations and spread best practices that lead to a better work environment for all.
4Executives are already part of a union. Boards approve the executive hiring of a company, but those boards are made up of executives from other companies. And those companies have boards that include executives from other companies. Hiring and firing of executives are handled by a collective of executives across many companies. It's a union that protects itself.
6If they can stop looking out for themselves first!
5I don't know if that will achieve what you want it to. Remember, the AMPTP is a union and it was able to get concessions from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA which are not good for the workers.
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Warms my heart to see everyone from across different industries unionizing.
Remember, unions and strikes work, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
58Physician here.
Medicine is one of the few professions in which capital is tied to labor (at least of the licensed independent clinicians). Hospitals, clinics, etc., can't run any test, provide any service, perform any surgery, without a physician (or other licenses clinicians) order.Health systems rely on their physicians to drive clinical practice. Physicians are the experts after all. It's a mutually beneficial relationship, but at its core, it is a partnership. This partnership certainly has it's ups and downs. But this is what happens when the health system forgets that it is a partnership.
15Buddy, that's every job where someone earns a paycheck.
If someone pays you a paycheck, you are labor. If you depend on that paycheck, they are capital, you are the proletariat.
We've been in the midst of a capital strike for 4 decades now, rebranded as neoliberalism, where capital only reinvests capital if it absolutely must, and then just the minimum. Every personal passion, every altruistic drive, or careers that give a sense of meaning will that same meaning held hostage and weaponized to silent dissent.
Complacency is complicity. The rallying cries have been handed down thru all of history
As long as one free man is jailed .... First they came for ....
Society, writ large, is a partnership. Highly specialized fields of study only exist because the cost to bring them in existence can be spread out amongst the bottom of the pyramid. If you're worked hard, learned hard and lucky enough you might be able to be at the top of it.
But you're just a part of the machine, not the driver or designer of it. The proper attitude at heights is gratitude and humility, being honored to have the chance to follow your passions, because how many below you, for whatever reason, had theirs compromised, stolen or confiscated. The brain outside the body isn't even worth its caloric density.
I'm proud you're fighting back and I'll stand in a protest line with you - even if that means state violence, and it often does. The police are mercenaries for the wealthy, whom you're at odds with, that means the police are not your allies here (some random cool sheriff notwithstanding).
We are all people here. We all have value independent of what capitalism rewards. No one is inherently better than anyone else. We are all just trying to live and be decent people. Don't forget that.
22I think their point was that in many fields, if people strike then the employer can somewhat easily find scabs to do the work in place of those striking, because everyone needs money to live. But in the medical field, along with a couple others, strikes can be even more effective because the employers legally can't fill roles with just anyone who will do the work- they need someone with a MASSIVE amount of education and certification, which gives doctors even more bargaining power that they can be leveraging if they work together
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Hospitals, clinics, etc., can’t run any test, provide any service, perform any surgery, without a physician (or other licenses clinicians) order.
This seems like a pretty significant externality, since physicians are both commonly wrong and conspire to keep their wages artificially high.
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