Healthcare Labor Unions: Pros and Cons - Essay Example

While unions have done a lot of good and have helped workers avoid exploitation, they also seem to have helped workers exploit employers. Perhaps it has been a gradual shift over time, with unions slowly accumulating more and more power. Unions might be overdoing their successes because they have ruined companies like GM by demanding more money and more benefits (Wagner, 2008). Healthcare workers should not, however, strike because by so doing innocent lives will be lost, furthermore, it is not this innocent life’s being lost that is responsible for their plight.

They should organize themselves into unions that will be responsible for championing for their rights and these unions should have the mandate to take the government to court if they do not listen to them or fail to obey their agreement with the government (Wagner, 2008). Other cons of healthcare workers joining the unions include pursuing lower worker patient ration, raising the flexibility in working conditions, treats of job slowing down due to strike, fight for wages increment and complexity in hiring and firing of workers.

Other pros include improving the organization productivity, reducing the turnover, boosting the hospital's profits and reducing state and federal spending. Doctors are independent contractors because hospitals exercised virtually no direction or control over the services provided by the doctors. Each doctor signed an agreement outlining his or her goals and responsibilities, but each doctor independently determined how to achieve the expected result. Hospitals also do not set tie for doctors they do not supervise their work and neither do they require the at a specific set time