Why do nurese sign up with agencies?

[browsing]

Hi. I'm not yet a nursing student (RN) so here goes my question. Why does a RN sign up with an agency? Do you just sign up with them and if you're qualified you end up with a job with great pay, benefits, etc? Like, you do not have to do anything but hold onto your license to get a job through the agency? After you get your job, do you still have the need to keep in touch with the agency that you've signed up with? Why do RNs need an agency? So that they can find you your "perfect" job?

Do you still have to interview and compete with other RNs to get the job that you want or does the agency automatically land you a job with no work on your behalf? Thank you.

[elthia]

Boy I wish I was union. Guess I got to leave the "good ole south" to get that.

Nurses who have unions are very fortunate. Sorry off topic..... but its been a sore spot for me for a while.

I work for a VAMC, in the south and we have a union. THE UNION SUCKS. A nurse who has a poor job performance, numerous poor yearly appraisals, numerous formal written complaints against her by staff and by patients, is known to ignore the telemetry monitors while she talks on the phone and shops online was finally going to be fired. She went to the union. Because the majority of the complaints were written by persons of a different race than this nurse, and the nurse manager was of a different race than her, the union stated that it was an EEOC issue, and the nurse kept her job, the nurse manager almost lost hers and was transferred to another section of the hospital.

Also, we have a persistent problem with tardiness and with people leaving early. We don't have timeclocks, time in/out is written in the schedule by the charge nurse, at the end of the week this goes to the official timekeeper who enters it into the computer. Well if the chargenurse writes someone in as tardy, a lot of times the tardy person will have a friend cover for them and lie and say that the tardy employee was on time. Charge nurse then has to deal with retaliation such as attitudes and poor job performance. the director states that we can't go to timeclocks like the rest of the world in the 21st century, because that would require negotiations with the union, and the union has consistently fought timeclocks.

I could go on and on. Basically at my facility, the union only helps the worthless employees.

[eddy]

I think this is a great, well thought out description.

One last drawback about agency nursing is that it disempowers staff nurses from collective bargaining.

Please explain your logic here. I just don't get how a group in the same field demanding higher wages and flexible work schedules (agency nurses) disempowers collective bargaining. Scabs during a strike, maybe, but in the general day to day normal operations of a facility, I just don't buy it. Perhaps you can prove otherwise? The way I see it, we're all working for the same thing.

In some respects, you could say that agencies are even more POWERFUL in terms of collective bargaining than that of largely weak and disenfranchised unions in the profession. With agencies, each person has the ability to judge for themselves what "fair" is. Isn't that what your union is telling you that you deserve. How well are they doing at getting that for you? As well as they are doing at collecting your dues?

Perhaps it's not that collective bargaining is the issue but that you are with the wrong group.

[eddy]

So I'm guessing that I won't be able to work for an agency after graduation due to my lack of working experience?

I thought there were programs where they land jobs for nurses and I thought to myself "Nursing is GOOD!" :rotfl: But I guess that is just too good to be true. I just don't understand why nurses would pay organization or company or whatever they're called to find them jobs. Is it just bcuz they don't want to waste time searching for a job or is there more to it than that? Does it cost a lot to hire a job searcher? I've researched to find out more about agencies and whatnot, but they all required me to sign up with them to find out anything more :uhoh21:

You don't typically pay for a recruitment/placement firm to find you a job. That used to be the case in many industries in the 70's and 80's but is all but gone now. Today employers pay the fees almost exclusively industry wide. In fact, some of these firms even pay YOU a bonus upon successful completion of the first 30-90 days following placement.