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Discussion

Anyone have experience working a strike?

There’s a potential strike happening in my area and some recruiters posted about working during the strike. Just wondering what the experience of working during a strike is like. Were there people waiting outside the hospital preventing you from getting in? What were the working conditions like? Any feedback is very much appreciated!

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    What are the grievances fueling the strike? How do the union members feel about you crossing their picket line? Will you be undermining their efforts to achieve safe staffing or some other important concession?

    It is likely not legal for them to prevent you from getting in. The working conditions will probably be what you'd expect to have driven nurses to strike in the first place. You will be perpetuating those working conditions.

    Is this really something you want to do?

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    You would be bussed in past the picket line. Lots of security at strikes. Working conditions are severe understaffing with management pitching in. Lots of strike workers from other places, mostly the south and midwest. Huge variances in quality of the nurses, not much time for due diligence staffing strikes. But most are good. The strike workers will get a few hours of hospital "orientation" at a remote site (often the hotel used for housing). Likely paper charting on downtime forms these days.

    The only reason to work a strike is the money. A good many of the nurses staffing strikes are from areas of the country with zero exposure to unions or their history and the benefits they bring workers and in our case, good patient care and safe staffing. So they don't know any better.

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    • Experts
    On 3/18/2019 at 7:21 PM, NedRN said:

    The only reason to work a strike is the money. A good many of the nurses staffing strikes are from areas of the country with zero exposure to unions or their history and the benefits they bring workers and in our case, good patient care and safe staffing. So they don't know any better.

    You're right. I think a lot of people don't get that this is an issue of ethics and that they're actually undermining their fellow nurses in achieving better working conditions. Strike workers actually perpetuate the problem.

    And of course working conditions during a strike will be terrible. They already were terrible, which was what necessitated a strike in the first place. Then you have a hodgepodge of people who have never worked together before, who have been minimally vetted and given no real orientation. Add to that management who can't nurse their way out of paper bags trying to make sense out of the chaos.

    The only reason to do this is the fast money. Same as robbing a bank.

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    I've done a couple of three day strikes, mostly to see what it was like and for a free trip to somewhere I wanted to go. I don't have an ethical issue with that, not a "real" strike, more of a negotiating tactic and depleting the hospital's strike insurance reserve. Makes the hospital more likely to negotiate in good faith as a subsequent strike would cost real money.

    Still, I recognize that even for such limited strikes, the hospital would never allow them to happen if replacement workers were not available. They would have to negotiate or shut down.

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