Around the country, resident physicians are joining unions. Recent votes by residents at the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVM), Stanford Medical Center (SMC), and Keck School of Medical of USC have all led to them joining the Committee of Interns and Residents, which is part of larger Service Employees International Union. These victories were achieved despite continued resistance from hospital bosses. Hospital bosses know that unionized residents physicians will be more difficult to exploit. This is why there is resistance. Residents should be more active in fighting for their rights and the care of patients. They should also demand that the healthcare system’s dynamics are challenged.
The rising popularity of resident physician unions is a result of a pro-union sentiment throughout the country. A recent study found that the United States’ approval of unions is at its highest level in more than 60 years. Gallup poll. As part of this pattern of growing support, workers in Amazon recently voted to establish the company’s first union in Staten Island, and Starbucks Workers around the country continue to win union votes, even with ongoing pushback and union-busting tactics from the company. Chris Smalls, interim President of ALU, stated that workers are becoming unionized to fight back against poor working conditions and not quit their jobs. Workers are looking for ways to fight back together against the boss, and more residents are joining unions to do the exact same.
However, only about one-seventh of the more than 145,000 resident doctors in the United States are currently unionized. However, all residents should be able to join a union. As we have. written about previouslyResidents are cheap labor in an abusive, for-profit healthcare industry. Resident training is in many ways a way to make physicians more efficient workers in a capitalist system of healthcare. This dynamic is often at the heart of the fight for resident labor unions. Hospital residents fight their unions for more demands, such as raises and housing stipends.
And resident organizing for and through unions only increased during the height of the Black Lives Matter Movement and then again throughout varying waves of the pandemic as resident physicians were at the frontlines caring for patients and witnessing the outcomes of intersections of race and class under capitalism have on people’s bodies. These experiences clearly showed how institutions that claim they care about patients’ health and well-being put their bottom line ahead of the well-being and wellbeing of frontline healthcare workers.
There is no doubt that we need more resident unions. As the number of resident unions increases, the most militant sections of resident physicians must explore ways to push beyond the demands for workplace improvements to question the exploitative dynamics of residency and more generally the dynamics of the for-profit healthcare system. We have already discussed this. written about in the pastDuring their training, residents work between 80 and 100 hours per week. They are cheap labor for hospital systems, and this labor helps maintain the factory-like atmosphere of many of these healthcare environments. Resident programs claim that they are concerned about the long hours, but their hands are tied. Resident unions may be able to challenge the 80-hour workweek and force their hospitals or clinics into unilaterally cutting work hours in contracts. This is a potential avenue for resistance (remember, my CIR local did this when I was a resident here in NYC, winning the first CIR hourly contract).
Struggles shouldn’t stop for hours. Residents should think about challenging their own union leadership. Most residents are members of the Committee of Interns and Residents. The union often attempts to “play nice” or be cordial with hospital leaderships, even signing “no-strike” clauses with the hospitals or clinics at which they are based. Hospital executives are enemies of patients and healthcare workers, so there should not be any cordial relationships with them. The strike is one the most powerful tools available to workers, and contracts should never be reneged on its potential.
Resident mobilizations should extend beyond the confines of medical residency. Resident physicians should unite in their workplaces against the exploitative healthcare system and push their unions for better healthcare. There are some signs of this in the current resident unionizing efforts, where workers want to push harder for improvements at their workplaces. At UVM, for example, they “want to tackle broader working conditions at the hospital, including an ongoing staffing shortage and a lack of adequate work spaces.”
Physicians today, whether they are still in residency or not, should see themselves as part and parcel of the working class. They must work with others to improve their conditions and fight for the well-being of the common good. Residents could also mobilize their unions, and fight alongside other unions to resist recent threats to the American right to abortion. To mobilize healthcare workers against the current war in Ukraine, rank and file committees could also be formed. Unionized healthcare workers should be mobilized against these battles at their workplaces as well as on the streets.
The pandemic demonstrated that the maintenance of individual and communal health goes beyond the walls of any clinic or hospital. If the right to choose is denied, it can threaten health and well-being. Jeff Bezos exploits Amazon workers, forcing them to work in dangerous conditions. Residents must continue to organize and fight to be more active and combative in their fight to be extended to other sectors and to other healthcare workers.
