Dr. John Wust does not come off as a labor agitator. A longtime obstetrician-gynecologist from Louisiana with a penchant for bow ties, Dr. Wust spent the first 15 years of his career as a partner in a small business — that is, running his own practice with colleagues.
Long after he took a position at Allina Health, a large nonprofit health care system based in Minnesota, in 2009, he did not see himself as the kind of employee who might benefit from collective bargaining.
But that changed in the months leading up to March, when his group of more than 100 doctors at an Allina hospital near Minneapolis voted to unionize. Dr. Wust, who has spoken with colleagues about the potential benefits of a union, said doctors were at a loss on how to ease their unsustainable workload because they had less input at the hospital than ever before.
“The way the system is going, I didn’t see any other solution legally available to us,” Dr. Wust said.
Currently, union power is at low ebb. Yes, unions can be and have been terrible engines of corruption when their power grows. I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know people who control millions of dollars are better than those who control billions, if only by degree. We need to tackle wealth disparity.
I am not convinced that there is a significant difference in shitty behavior between millionaires and billionaires. The consequences ship has already long since sailed by the time you are at a couple million. But tell that to the people being sexually harassed and assaulted by their managers and sometimes even union reps. Tell them that they don’t matter right now and what matters is “wealth inequality”.
Hell, you might as well tell them that you are going to give their abusers even more power since the union leadership generally comes from the “popular” low level managers and workers.
Like I said, I think unions are, generally, a net good. But it aggravates me to no end when people ignore the problems they can and can’t solve.