The Pandemic Is ‘Over,’ But Healthcare Workers Are Still Ailing

by | May 18, 2023 | Bargaining/Negotiations, Healthcare, NLRB, Strikes, Union Organizing

The healthcare industry continues to fall prey to rampant organizing activity. Of course, much of that concerns the pressure-cooker environment left by a pandemic. Unions remain pleased to take advantage of the situation. However, this industry is not immune to the reality of how long it takes – sometimes more than five years – for a union contract.

This stagnation understandably frustrates workers who expected results as promised by the union. As is currently the case in Minnesota, this leads to unions getting the boot, as with two groups of Mankato Mayo workers who recently filed decertification petitions.

The rest of this healthcare roundup is more of what we are sadly used to seeing these days with a bittersweet twist: the federal government officially ended the COVID-19 emergency on May 11.

Meanwhile, nursing shortages worsen after these workers never received a break from hospital overcrowding. Droves of nurses are vacating the profession, leaving those who remain in even more dire staffing straits. It’s no wonder about a third of U.S. nurses claim to have one foot out the door of the profession.

A safe staffing law in Maine is in the works after a report that a mere 56% of the state’s nearly 30,000 licensed nurses remain in the field. A state lawmaker declared that, in effect, there is no nurse shortage, per se, only a lack of nurses who wish to be nurses.

Resident physicians continue to ride an organizing wave. These include 2,500+ residents at Boston’s Mass General Brigham and 450 residents at George Washington University in D.C., A recent op-ed from a resident, conceded that situations are indeed grim in hospitals. Still, they urged their fellow doctors-in-training to consider that unions may not help the situation. They might hurt residents by depriving them of benefits and raises granted to non-union workers.

Let’s finish with a strike roundup:

  • California: Five HCA Healthcare facilities will weather five-day strikes later this month throughout the state. In San Francisco, thousands of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland workers – nurses, respiratory therapists, technicians, housekeepers, and more – went on the most significant strike of the hospital’s history.
  • Kansas: Nurses at Wichita’s Ascension Via Christi St. Francis held an informational picket on May 1 to raise awareness of staffing shortages.
  • Michigan: Technologists, social workers, medics, and dietary workers picketed at Grand Haven’s Trinity Health for improved wages and benefits.
  • Missouri: Nursing home workers authorized a 10-day strike and swiftly reached a contract at three St. Louis facilities.
  • Ohio: Maintenance workers, nursing assistants, and electricians voted to authorize a May strike at Cleveland Clinic Lutheran Hospital.
  • Minnesota: After 400 SEIU-represented medical workers voted for a 7-day strike, a 19-hour bargaining session led to new contracts at several hospitals.

Healthcare employers should also take note of NLRB’s crackdown on repeat offenders of the NLRA, which could bring so-called “draconian remedies.” These include reimbursing employees and unions for costs and lost wages during bargaining sessions.

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