Health Care Industry
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The Problem
The caring professions are being transformed into an industry that like any other industry is production oriented and profit driven. The care is being squeezed out of the health care. HMO's, managed care and mega- mergers are pushing profits over quality care. They are downsizing staff, contracting out, replacing highly skilled professionals with less skilled substitutes, and increasing caregiver responsibilities without training or increased compensation, leaving our health care system understaffed, overwhelmed and with compromised care quality.
Compensation for hospital executives is rising three times the rate for nurses, a marketing manager makes more than a nursing director. Nursing home caregivers are struggling on poverty level wages and inadequate benefits. As a result, health care professionals are caring for more patients with less support and fewer resources.
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The UFCW is a community-based union. We are in every neighborhood. Our health care members are part of the community and part of the family. UFCW caregivers reach and touch our lives at the most important moments—they are the first person we see at birth and the last person we see when we die. The UFCW cares for caregivers. We are the voice of care.
Right now the UFCW represents more than 100,000 working men and women in the health care profession throughout North America. Through our union, we have already improved safety in the workplace, restructured staffing and compensation levels, and just recently won an agreement with an employer that gives the caregivers the right to sue the employer if staffing levels get too low. In addition, health care workers who have joined together through the UFCW on average, earn more than non-union workers. For example, an organized registered nurse makes 10 percent more than a non-union nurse, unionized aides and orderlies earn 50 percent more than non-union aides and orderlies.
Through union representation, health care workers can improve wages, expand benefits (including pensions), foster professional development, and finally, put the care back into the health care industry.
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