Why Hospital Workers Need Unions

Abstract

As we struggle to lower health care costs in the U.S., it seems that our focus is often misplaced. Much as we try to make health care a technological enterprise, we know at heart it is a human endeavour. While robots might prove to be more adept than surgeons (though in the end they probably won’t), it is people that provide us with hope and compassion and help us get through trying times. In our efforts to make health care less expensive, we neglect the outrageous salaries given to hospital and health care CEO’s and their growing administrative minions but cut the hours of hospital environmental workers who keep us safe from infections; we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on unproven technologies like proton beam scanners while refusing to hire enough nurses to adequately provide care to patients; and we watch safety-net hospitals close and be converted to condo’s while paying millions to bankruptcy lawyers and consultants. While the ACA has been a great mechanism for insuring many more Americans, its intent was not to address the health workforce in any direct manner. It should be noted that while the ACA required that a Commission on Health Workforce be established, to date it has not happened.