Healthcare - Unions Implications of Term Paper

Because unions retain the exclusive right to negotiate on behalf of its members, the individual worker may have little recourse to easily address incompetent leadership.

The Disadvantages of Unionized Labor for Healthcare Employers:

The primary disadvantages of unionized labor for healthcare employers correspond to the relative loss of control over issues and workplace elements commonly transferred to workers (through their unions), which accounts for the traditional resistance with which many employers responded to unionization attempts. On the one hand, unionized workforces are able to secure better pay and benefits from employers than would have been available to workers without union representation; likewise, employers must cede control over many aspects of operational and personnel decisions traditionally within administrative control.

On the other hand, particularly in light of the beneficial effect that unionized nursing has had on the quality of patient care and reduction in patient mortality, it is difficult to conceive of unionization as having any significant disadvantages except in the most narrow terms. Furthermore, any minor disadvantages to employers in the nature of increased overhead costs represented by higher wages, staffing requirements, and benefits packages are likely balanced by the reduction in administrative resources necessary to negotiate traditional employee issues and disputes now handled by the unions instead of healthcare management.

Conclusion:

Unionized labor is a concept that evolved in the late 19th century coinciding with the transition from a national economy that relied on unskilled labor to the skilled labor required for the rapidly expanding modern industrialization of the United States. The growth of heavy industrialization and manufacturing in the steel, automotive, construction, and transportation industries provided natural environments for unionized labor. Because a representative system of unionized labor administrates large contracts and employee benefits plans in addition to negotiating with outside entities relying on union labor, it is a process that is susceptible to infiltration by criminal elements.

Organized crime connections to union labor in its first major era subsequent to the Great Depression and the New Deal undermined the wider adoption of unionized labor immediately thereafter, but unionization enjoyed a resurgence of enthusiasm in the latter quarter of the 20th century.

Healthcare workers were relatively late to adopt the unionized labor market, but several factors arising within the healthcare industry in the last two decades have generated increasing interest in unionized workforces. Budgetary considerations in particular prompted many American hospitals to impose operational mechanisms and personnel decisions on nurses that were perceived to impact both workers and the quality of medical care delivered to patients negatively..

Several recent empirical studies comparing non-union healthcare facilities to unionized facilities have only corroborated the concerns voiced for years by nurses over the quality-of-care issues associated with poor management decisions and administrative oversight by non-medical professionals. At approximately the same time, high-profile news reports of the potential dangers associated with relying on traditional retirement plans highlighted the need for defined benefits retirement plans ordinarily negotiated by unions on behalf of their members. Ultimately, the advantages of unionized labor in the healthcare industry provides more advantages than disadvantages for healthcare workers, employers, and patients as well.

Bibliography

Daft, R. (2005) Management (7th ed.) Mason: Thomson South Western.

Nevins, J., Commager, H. (1992) a Pocket History of the United States.

New York: Pocket Books

Seago, J., Ash, M. (2002)

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