Should doctors and nurses be allowed to strike

Or is it against the good of the people and the hippocratic oath?

In Australia there is talk again of strikes by nurses if their demands are not met. This despite a four hundred million loss in revenue.

 

This is a loaded question that I would love to address.

I'm at work right now (and the next six days) but will try and get to this at some point.

It's a very important question.

Nurses can and do strike in the US, by the way.

Peace,

V-03

 

Don't doctors and nurses usually avoid going on strike, and even then only those involved in non-critical services will actually strike?

 

Like I said, it's a loaded question, and no, nurses in unions can strike at any time, in any field.

Physicians cannot strike per se, but they can surrender their licenses.

Much more when I have some time.

Peace,

V-03

 

Striking is a protest, protesting is a form of expression which is a form of free speech and should therefore be permitted in all nations that claim to be "free".

 

It's a bit different with doctors and such. Are they really going to just stand there on the picket line as people come into the ER for help and wind up dying because there is no one to help them? That goes against everything a doctor stands for.

 

I have mixed feelings about this but in the defense of the unions, my husband is a Teamster and I can attest to the fact that striking is a last resort. The union members don't especially want to strike, they lose wages. We live in a right-to-work state and the power of unions is weaker here than it is in other places--in fact, North Carolina government employees are not allowed to strike at all--but there has only been a strike threat once in the nine years that my husband has been with his company, and they worked out negotiations in the 11th hour. He drives a bus, and while we aren't talking about lives being on the line, if all the bus operators went on strike, the city would be a mess.

I don't like the idea of striking because people suffer other than the company heads that the unions are striking against. However, my experience has been that unions only go to strikes when they have exhausted all other options. Again, someone from a closed-shop state may have a different experience.

 

Conditions don't very much favor it happening, frankly. The role of collectivized bargaining is comparatively minimal in salaried versus wage labor. Indeed, if anything, people would probably say that it's the failure of physicians to work/bargain collectively that is more likely to cause them problems (eg their political lobbying is pretty under-powered when compared to the size and resources of the profession). It's a cultural thing that has to do with how they're socialized and is a pretty major impediment before you even get to the question of striking or not.

 

A very astute analysis, Jabba-wocky, but I can tell you firsthand that the way things are going, the sea change in attitude necessary to bring about such actions is rapidly approaching in the medical profession.

A point of intolerability is being reached. A major storm will occur when it does.

Peace,

V-03

 

Of course they should have a right to strike everywhere. People in all jobs should have the right.

In here they have, and funnily enough, the bourgeois mainstream media rarely whines about when doctors go on strike, even when they are always after higher pay rises than nurses, but when nurses strike, the same mainstream media that mainly tried to avoid writing about striking middle class heroes in white coats whines about elderly patients left to die etc. Class solidarity in action, I guess.

 

People are also glossing over the role of arbitration. In all the areas that I know of, (and although I'm not 100% sure of this, it might even be federal law) "critical skills" professions are prohibited from striking. These include police officers, firefighters, air traffic controllers, some nuclear reactor technicians and the like.

However, this is where the role of arbitration steps in. Has anyone ever heard in the news where "so and so city's firefighters have been without a contract for 6 months..." for example? It means that the old contract remains in effect until the new proposals from both sides are worked out. An arbitrator looks at things like "comparable compensation" and such, which means that if the surrounding fire departments all earn X amount of pay, and one department earns 20% less, then there will probably be some sort of "equalizing jump" ruled on. It's probably going to be a middle figure compared to what either side wants, but there are procedures set up to handle labor disputes in professions that can't strike.

I'd imagine a medical board equivalent could be used for doctors and hospital based physicians instead of simply walking out and violating the Hippocratic Oath.

 

The whole point of striking would be to have a compromise so as to prevent significant damage to the wellbeing of the public. The mere idea of what would happen if medical staff were to strike should be enough to get a reaction.

And I've rarely seen a situation where 100% of all members of a union or company or whatever actually go through with a stike. We've had numerous stikes by staff on the Underground trains network here and usually about 90% of the staff strike and 10% keep things going as much as possible. I've never seen a situation where no trains were running at all or all stations were shut because every single staff member was striking, that just doesn't happen.

Even when London Fire Brigade went on stike a few years ago, some Firemen were still on hand to deal with emergency situations.