Comments on: Nurse Hillary: This May Hurt a Little

By: Catron

Catron — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:36:30 +0000

You’re being deliberately obtuse here. I’m saying that unions have the same effect on hospitals as they have on education. They create a situation in which high wages are paid to mediocre employees who are virtually impossible to get rid of. This is not a complicated concept.

By: Marc Brown

Marc Brown — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 10:00:23 +0000

‘In order to get rid of a useless staff member, you practically had to have him on video murdering puppies.’

Are you saying that unions are so powerful that management can no longer operate successfully? Or could it be just rank bad management in many cases?

By: Catron

Catron — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:46:20 +0000

They made it nearly impossible to fire the slugs, or to make significant process improvements.

In order to get rid of a useless staff member, you practically had to have him on video murdering puppies. And, since the employees knew they were virtually “fire proof,” they were much more inclined to low productivity and poor quality work than any group of non-union employees I have dealt with.

If you wanted to make any serious process or organizational improvement, you were likely to find yourself accused (by the shop steward) of “changing the terms of the contract.”

So, in terms of effective management, we were rendered more or less “inert.”

By: Marc Brown

Marc Brown — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:01:13 +0000

‘the union-imposed inertia’

That’s meaningless. What exactly did the unions do?

By: Catron

Catron — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:05:54 +0000

I once worked for a unionized hospital, and the union-imposed inertia combined with the inevitable upward pressure on expenses made efficient operation virtually impossible.

If you want health care to be like our disgrace of a public school system, unionization will do the trick.

By: Marc Brown

Marc Brown — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:46:27 +0000

Are you anti-trade union too?