Healthcare Labor Unions-Has the Time Come?

Abstract

No abstract available. Article truncated after 150 words. Labor unions in America look like they are making a comeback. Employees at Starbucks stores, Amazon warehouses, Trader Joe's, and REI, grad students, Uber and Lyft drivers and employees at the Medieval Times have voted to unionize. Hollywood actor and writers, the United Auto Workers, and Kaiser Permanente employees have been on strike (1). Headline writers began declaring things like, "Employees everywhere are organizing" and that the United States was seeing a "union boom” (2). In September, the White House asserted "Organized labor appears to be having a moment" (2). However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its union data for 2022 and the data shows that the share of American workers in a union has continued to decline (2). Last year, the union membership rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 10.1% — the lowest on record. Despite an increase in union efforts since the pandemic, healthcare workers — particularly …