Worcester Business Journal

8 Worcester Business Journal | April 26, 2021 | wbjournal.com F or more than a month and a half, Saint Vincent Hospital's administration and hundreds of nurses have been locked in a tense strike over staffing levels. e standoff comes at a crossroads time for unions: their number of members has been on a steady decline for decades, and a high-profile unionization vote among Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama was voted down in early April. At the same time, unions have gained strength at two other healthcare spots in Central Massachusetts: UMass Medical School in Worcester and Milford Regional Medical Center. e federal government has two strong union backers in President Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, the former Boston mayor. Despite a high-profile Amazon defeat and the stalled Saint Vincent strike, labor experts see the power of unions starting to rise again Unions on cusp of REVOLUTION "What's interesting about right now is that there's a pervasive sense of new organizing," said Tom Juravich, a labor professor at UMass Amherst. "It feels like a new era for interest in unions." A turnaround in the fortunes of unions would be a long time coming. Union workers have been on the wane for years, both in Massachusetts and nationally. In the past two decades, the number of Massachusetts workers who belong to a union fell by 14%, even as the number of total workers grew during that time by 4%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationally, union workers have dropped in number by 13% while the total number of workers has jumped almost 7%. Effects of a shifting economy Labor experts attributed the disappearance of union labor to a few causes. For one, the automakers, steel factories and other jobs that long ago made up the backbone of organized labor are largely gone. Where automakers do have plants, many are in the South, where labor is cheaper and support for unions is lower. Exacerbating that has been federal and state laws experts said have weakened unions. More than half the states, though not Massachusetts, have passed right-to-work laws, which, among other aspects, don't require employees to pay union dues. Experts find employers typically less friendly to working with unions on bargaining. "Employers are more and more hostile to unions in recent decades," said Ruth Milkman, a professor of sociology and labor at the City University of New York. Into those diverging trends comes the Saint Vincent strike, which comes down mainly to how many patients a nurse is assigned to during a shi. e Massachusetts Nurses Association says the hospital gives nurses too many patients to take care of, sacrificing safety and the quality of care. e union says Saint Vincent has the finances to increase staffing – its parent company, the for-profit Tenet Healthcare in Dallas, had $414 million in profit on more than $4 billion in net operating revenue in the fourth quarter. Saint Vincent ended its most recent fiscal year with a nearly $74-million net surplus, a 14.2% profit margin. Saint Vincent, for its part, says that staffing levels are safe and in line with industry counterparts. e two sides have yet to sit down for negotiations since the strike began March 8, and they've exchanged sharp barbs and allegations of bad faith in the weeks since. In the meantime, two other healthcare- related sites in Central Massachusetts have shown continued union strength in the past few months. Nearly 57% of registered nurses at BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor PHOTO/GRANT WELKER Local government ....................... 41.7 Protective service occupations ................................ 36.6 Education, training, and library occupations ................................ 35.9 State government ....................... 29.9 Federal government .................... 26.0 Utilities ....................................... 20.6 Construction and extraction occupations ................ 17.7 Transportation and warehousing .................................. 17 Community and social service occupations ................................ 15.6 Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations ............... 14.5 U.S. union members Where workers are most likely to belong to a union nationally, as ranked by percent of workforce in a union Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Saint Vincent Hospital nurses went on strike March 8 for better patient staffing ratios. In the weeks since, nurses can often be seen around the Worcester hospital's perimeter.

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