Why is unionization a subject of taboo??

treysdaddy08 · Nov 22, 2011

First union I can recall, was led by the founding fathers.

Second was led by Abe Lincoln, and continued by Rosa Parks, et al.

A union is a group of people that sacrifice, so that their successors can have it better than they did.

talaxandra · Nov 22, 2011

What have the unions ever done for us? Those of you who are Monty Python fans (specifically Life of Brian) will like

; for those if you outside Australia, the knowledge that the vaguely left wing party here is Labor (and, ironically, the conservatives are Liberal, because we're not just upside down but back to front!).

Here, BTW, is the

; and the US

(I don't think it's as funny!).

DavidZen · Nov 24, 2011

Unions are discouraged and disparaged in a neverending increased program of propaganda delivered by the 1%'rs, and increasingly believed by those (younger people) that have not known the sweeping protection unions once offered, so therefore as unions fall, more people are therefore increasingly unaware of their benefits, so the cycle of believing the propaganda takes an even deeper root, to put it simply.

KelRN215, BSN, RN · Dec 2, 2011

Unions are discouraged and disparaged in a neverending increased program of propaganda delivered by the 1%'rs, and increasingly believed by those (younger people) that have not known the sweeping protection unions once offered, so therefore as unions fall, more people are therefore increasingly unaware of their benefits, so the cycle of believing the propaganda takes an even deeper root, to put it simply.

Couldn't have said it better myself! The hospitals are anti-union because it means they have to share their power with their workers. My hospital is a perfect example of using fear-mongering, scare tactics and anti-union propaganda. So much so that people who have worked there for YEARS are convinced that anyone who even mentions the word union will be fired. Not to mention, many of these people have not ever worked anywhere else so they don't realize how much we DON'T have and will never gain without a union.

I personally have not worked at a union hospital (though I hope that by this time next year I can say that I successfully led the campaign to unionize my hospital) but I grew up with parents who were both in unions. My mother is a teacher and my father worked for the phone company. Now, as an adult, I have more benefits through my mother's union than I have through my own workplace. I got several mortgage-related discounts (lower closing costs, lower attorney fees, lower rate) through her union and I have both my homeowners' and car insurance through them.

I have actually laughed out loud when I received emails from my employer stating how our workplace is democratic. It is the greatest example of an oligarchy I've ever experienced. (There's a word I haven't used since high school.) All the power rests with the managers, essentially, and what they say goes. Rules come out of nowhere all the time... manager doesn't like you and you ask for vacation time, all of a sudden there's a rule that you can't take 2 vacations within 4 months even though you have more than enough time in your bank, this has never been a rule before and this doesn't apply to others. I have seen it happen.

fuzzywuzzy, CNA · Dec 31, 2011

i have been an rn for over thirty years, and in the nursing field since 1973. nursing & healthcare was better before big government, big hospital chains and big labor got involved. we had more staff, more time and felt better about ourselves. even the public rated us higher as professionals than they do today. the problem is clearly not nurses, but lefty politicos, and it all started in 1965 with medicare and medicaid. back in the day, 1966, a private medical family policy cost about $75 a month in 2010 dollars and everything medical cost about one seventh of what it does today in 2010 dollars. adjusted for inflation, our salaries are similar to that time, so union or not, we have made limited progress on wages and lost ground on working conditions. so much for union progress. by setting the bar for other businesses, unions really raise costs for everyone.

this just doesn't make any sense to me. union membership has been declining for years, so you can't reasonably blame them for the poor conditions healthcare workers have to put up with today. if anything is driving up the costs of healthcare, making it harder for facilities to offer adequate staffing and compensation, it's the big pharmaceutical and private insurance corporations! the unions have no control over that, and how can you expect them to? you keep scapegoating "big government" and leftist principles in your posts (communism in particular, although the us has never been communist, so i don't know where that's coming from), but these problems are actually a result of laissez faire capitalism-- its total opposite. i don't think that medicare, of all things, is a bigger burden on the system than for-profit drug companies raking in money hand over fist. medicare costs a lot of money only because healthcare itself costs a lot of money, so when you put the blame for our situation there, you're putting the cart before the horse.

i work in two different nursing homes, both in the same town. one of them is union and one is not. the non-union place has a better reputation but having worked at both places, i have to say that the level of care is equally good in both. the staffing ratios are the same, as are the quality and availability of supplies. the union facility has better pay and better benefits, while the non-union facility has nicer-looking wallpaper, and that's about it! :) the union facility is a nicer place to work in general; there's a lot less favoritism and backstabbing, and management is not constantly getting on your case about everything. at the non-union place, people feel under-appreciated and insecure. no matter how hard you work, it's never good enough; this seems to have produced a lot of employees who spend more time kissing butt than working and another set of employees who work even harder to pick up the slack and are bitter about it. guess which group i belong to? the only reason i still work there is because i'm attached to the residents. don't get me wrong-- there are lazy people at both facilities, but at my union job, i've never seen the level of brown-nosing that i do at the other place, and i haven't seen people get thrown under the bus either. i guess when people are secure in their jobs, they don't feel as much need to tear each other down. i've heard protection of lazy employees cited as a reason against unions, but whatever- there are people like that everywhere and most of the time they don't need a union to create job security; they just need a set of lips to kiss butt with.

talaxandra · Dec 31, 2011

union membership has been declining for years...

in australia, though, union membership in general continues to grow. the anf is the second largest union in the country, with almost a third of members living in victoria (the second most populous, and also second smallest, state), accounting for 75% of nurses!

Chico David, BSN, RN · Dec 31, 2011

I might add that healthcare in general and nursing in particular is one of the few areas in the US where union membership is growing. A lot of union shrinkage has been due to the offshoring of various kinds of work that were unionized. Harder to do that with hospitals.

chuckster, ADN, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Jan 2, 2012

Ironically, this link turns up on the AN page hosting this discussion: Union Avoidance | Unions: The 7 Lies «

talaxandra · Jan 2, 2012

Not the closest match between thread and ad I've ever seen...

lossforimagination · Jan 3, 2012

Why is it men don't seem to have a problem with the idea of unionization? Let's not forget that physicians are often unionized, as are most all airline pilots. Men certainly aren't about to be screwed by management in the way women allow themselves to be. And clearly, for people who do some seriously dirty work for a living; why exactly is unionization too 'unprofessional' and nursing too uppity a profession to be unionized? Most people wouldn't be caught dead getting an education where they are expected to clean up bodily fluids and human waste.

If it's not unprofessional for MDs and airline pilots to unionize, it certainly shouldn't be for nurses.

Chico David, BSN, RN · Jan 3, 2012

Men are not so into the sacrificial thing that so many nurses seem to have bought into. Accepting poor wages and absurd working conditions "for the good of the patients" - even though management may be making fat salaries and/or big profits while cutting the nursing care and the nurses wages. What's really for the good of the patients is to demand decent staffing levels and good enough wages to draw top people into the field.

Back when we were negotiating our first contract I was on the bargaining team and I was the one who wrote most of the bargaining updates we sent out to nurses. The lawyer who was negotiating for management was a (several words I can't use here) and they were doing everything possible to prevent us getting a contract at all, let alone a decent one. So that information was in the updates. At one of our membership meetings a nurse got up and said "I don't like to read those updates because sometimes they say things about managment that aren't very nice". I remember thinking "I'll bet you'd never hear that at a meeting of a mostly male union".

lindarn · Jan 3, 2012

Unfortunately, there are still too many women who go into nursing because they have a pathological need to, "help". This mentality goes right along with the, "Martry Mary", mentality ,that permeates nursing.

Unions are the ONLY thing that will save the nursing profession. We are seeing an unpredented rise in hospitals, doctors' offices, and clinics, who are using unsikilled, minimally educated individuals to do the professional work of nurses.

This will continue until they have reduced the profession of nursing to nothing more than a bunch of "tasks, that can be done by a HS dropout.

Nursing contracts that refuse to allow our professional practice to be encroached on, is all that will save our professional practice. It is up for sale to the highest bidder.

JMHO and my NY $0.02.

Lindarn, RN,BSN,CCRN

Somewhere in the PACNW