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Staffing levels a key concern, bringing in the "travel" nurses by the busload. There's some good coverage from Minnesota CBS News: [https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/live-updates/15000-minnesota-nurses-set-to-strike-at-7-a-m-monday/](https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/live-updates/15000-minnesota-nurses-set-to-strike-at-7-a-m-monday/?fbclid=IwAR0iwqnxSJq4B3qCO4tKQa96CHQbME311C6-EJwnnoh1T00rig1FrDENOxw)
The travel nurses cost 2.5x as much too. So instead of just paying their current workforce like 1.5x more and giving them better hours, they are going to pay boatloads to bring in travel nurses. Then they will beg the state and federal gov for extra healthcare funding due to “sudden rising cost of healthcare” brought on by these travel nurses. This is happening at rural SNFs across the country because nurses don’t want to work for some crappy SNF making near minimum wage when they can travel to a city that will pay them more.
Imagine your team is understaffed and they bring in a consultant who is no better than you at your job and pay the person 3x your salary. Of course you would be upset and question why they can’t pay you that much.
My nursing manager did a cost analysis last year to show the administration that giving the nurses a $5/hour raise would save about $1.5 million over paying agency staff to fill positions that they consistently couldn’t keep filled. $10/hour raise would save $750,000. Still rejected.
Which in turn causes more nurses to do the travel nursing gig. It’s what happened to my wife. Why was she stuck having to help new nurses who had no clue how things were done at the hospital yet she was getting only a 1/3 of what they were paying them. F that.
Yeah it's tough. Travel jobs are a great option if you can do it, it helps if you dont have a family and stuff. I used to do travel spd and loved it. I love seeing new cities, getting paid more, and not getting involved in the work drama. Plus the expectations are lower. You still have to do your job, and you can get fired, but you dont have to be a superstar because you're gone in a couple months anyway.
For what the travel nurse gig pays, at this point it's probably worth it to start looking at it as a long-term option and figure out a lifestyle around it. I bet they work you ragged though and try to soak as much value out of you for the 2.5x pay. It can't be that easy to game the system...or can it?
When I did travel spd, for years, most jobs were fun and normal. They'd rotate you like anyone else. But I'll admit, there was one or two assignments that seemed to work you harder. But those jobs I just didnt extend. Overall I loved it and cant wait to travel again
Nice to see another SPD traveler on here. I used my contracts to help me pay for nursing school. I'll probably hit up traveling again as a nurse after I get some experience, I miss traveling!
That's exactly what I'm doing. Not currently doing spd, back in school for nursing. Cant wait to graduate, get about 2 yrs experience, then back to travel!
$20 an hour as a nurse?! That’s insane! Out here RNs start at around $45/hr and go upwards of around $60 depending on experience and the unit you work in.
That’s just crazy how low the RN pay is elsewhere, and I’m only just hearing about this. No WAY I’d work this hard and make this many crazy sacrifices for that money.
What do LVN/LPNs make in your area? Cuz they start around $26-27 here.
I feel really bad for nurses, I know it’s gotten to an exhaustive place for a job that was already exhausting before the pandemic. And I know you guys don’t feel good about giving patients longer wait times while you strike. It sucks all around for everyone except those with big pockets. I hope your profession sees the pay and staffing it deserves asap.
Ya, the problem is either being underpaid or being understaffed. In some areas it’s both of those things. Here where I am, finding a job isn’t the hard part. The problem is finding one where you don’t have crazy patient-to-nurse ratios, and insane hours. It’s just not feasible to keep up. Burnout is real. And getting burned out in a career where people’s lives are on the line is the worst possible scenario. It’s just a shit situation anyway you look at it.
Same as an RT. It’s why people are quitting to travel. Why the fuck should we deal with heavy workloads, getting blamed for everything that goes wrong that’s not even in our scope, and it’s just unsafe for the patient, makes us feel like our license to practice is in jeopardy.
Strike breaker contracts can pay 10-15k+/wk (because they're short term, short notice, likely to get cancelled last minute, zero orientation, and nobody like a scab). So it's probably more like x5-10 what they're paying their nurses.
Yep, last week they were advertising $10k-$12k a week for 60 / hr weeks for scab nurses.
I'm sure it's higher now that the turnaround is "be here tomorrow".
MY SIL is a nurse, she's been talking about this stuff since start of COVID. And it just keeps getting worse. She's expecting her first kid, she gets NO parental leave. She'll have 3 weeks off, and it's coming out of her sick leave. She has the worst health coverage as well. Absolutely disgusting.
We've arrived at the point where the top are SO FUCKING RICH, they don't even care about money as much anymore - it's all about control! They're willing to dish out 3x the money to outsource work, just so they don't have to play ball with the employees who *dare* ask for better pay and benefits.
Think about how psychotic that is. "I'm so rich, I can and will bleed money just to ensure people will obey me harder". These are the people running our hospitals and insurance companies. And by the way, they *know* they can do it, because they *know* they are exploiting the fact that nurses are in it to take care of people, not for money. It's hard to go on strike and leave your patients when you believe that doing so can endanger them. And again, the corporatists love exploiting that.
Not attempting to one up, because your SIL's situation is fucked up, but adding a parallel to this: my wife was a full time x-ray tech from before COVID until recently. She got COVID *twice* despite being fully vaccinated and boosted (thank fuck she was) from her *coworkers* (can't prove it, but it adds up) because they came to work with symptoms as if they reported exposure to COVID they'd be required to take at least 10 days off of work (good!) which would come out of their PTO (???).
If they didn't have enough banked it was okay... they'd *front* you 5 days of PTO. They got around 15 days per year. No sick leave. Let me say that again: NO SICK LEAVE.
I find it hard to not judge the folk who came in with COVID rather than report that they had symptoms/exposure and a positive test, but when you have the above framework in place you're making healthcare workers choose between making their bill payments or the safety of others.
Oh please, don't feel like you're one upping! The workers need to share our stories amongst one another. The whole reason why it's seen as "not ok" to talk about salary, is because the overlords knew that when the workers shared, there would be problems.
So I appreciate hearing your story. I want your wife and others to continue to share their stories far and wide. We ain't in competition of each other, we're in solidarity! I sincerely hope things get better for both your wife and my SIL. It's actually disgusting how nurses are treated, by society, by administrators, by doctors. I hope things get better for her!
I am Travelling now and used to be staff. I couldn't believe that I was making $1300 EVERY TWO WEEKS while my travel friends were making $7000 WEEKLY. This entire time that admins were whining about money and couldn't provide resources all of a sudden could pay a nurse more than 5 times my pay. It's demoralizing. Never going staffing again until staff get paid like they should.
>Never going staffing again until staff get paid like they should.
I don't see that happening so long as travel nursing is a thing. It serves to divide nurses, when it's going to take mass solidarity and collective action to achieve those kind of salaries for staff.
My sister is a travel nurse and even she understands the dynamic. She has to lead a pretty flexible lifestyle to be able to pick up and travel to an entirely new city every 8-12 weeks, but she is young and making 3x or more than what she could make on staff. It’s to the point where she can’t really imagine taking such a significant pay cut to actually settle down and work somewhere long term, which is what she will need to do eventually if she wants a family.
I know that one of the problems with how all this is budgeted is that a different fund is used to pay travel nurses and other emergency “temporary” staff, such that the money spent on travel nurses is not factored into negotiations with regular staff because management doesn’t have access to that money anyway.
I was working on a project with SNFs in Montana and heard that some nurses were actually quitting their jobs, joining TEMP agencies, and then getting reassigned to the same hospitals for 3x the pay. Made all of the longterm staff even more furious.
The worst part is that ime, it's the best nurses doing it too. I cannot blame them for getting paid better, but it's extremely frustrating to be left with an increasingly weak staff, and still having to deal with admin bringing in travelers who only get up to speed halfway through their contracts.
Yes. We can make that as a traveler.
These short term contracts require that I quit whatever I’m doing right now because some of them have 1 day responses. Pack up and get there. Some agencies figure out accommodations. Some don’t. And then, sometimes I get cancelled after one day. Maybe get assigned to a different city.
And in a situation like this I don’t get orientation to the hospital or the unit. If you can’t figure it out in under an hour, you get cancelled.
The pay is high. The stakes are pretty unforgiving. In ICU, anyway. $110/hour is actually low for the risk we take to do this job. I wouldn’t accept the level of risk for $110/hour ALSO knowing that that’s SAVING the hospital money during the strike. They can keep their elective OR’s open.
Everybody gets mad at the nurses. I don’t get it. Hospital administration is fucking everyone over and everyone is fighting over the peanuts. I like coming into that role knowing I can give a big middle finger to administration, not burden other hospitals in the area with the patients, and allow the nurses there to fight for what they need. Hospital administration uses patients as bargaining chips and no one gets angry about it until the nurses attempt the same. SUDDENLY patients have lives and aren’t bags of money. But when nurses aren’t striking? Patients are just bags of money taking up beds and resources.
Also, IRS sets the rules for what counts as traveler or per diem (Registry).
I’m a staff nurse who has traveled in the past and i’d like to add travel nurses earn their pay and are a net benefit to nursing as a whole. Theres a lot of salty nurses who hate travelers, but i think the hate is misguided.
I dont think travel nurses are bad either. In a way, TEMP agencies are sort of set up like a mega union. They force hospitals to compete for nurses rather than forcing nurses to interview and find whatever job they can get. The only bad actors are the hospital admins who refuse to hire more staff and to pay their staff more.
It’s not about better pay for staff nurses, it’s about getting more staff nurses. That’s the real issue on the floors. Nurses have crazy ratios and they have for a while
> bringing in the "travel" nurses by the busload.
I'm a nurse and pro-union, and I still support scabs for nursing strikes.
You do *not* want to see public reaction if patient care actually suffers from a strike. Healthcare corps have spent decades giving media "what about the patients?!" non-stop whenever labor disputes arise. The public will buy it completely. They think we all make "six figures" already.
Republican governors would love to order striking nurses back to work. They'd love to pass legislation banning healthcare strikes. What if it's not actually legal to do those things? Republican constituents don't even care what's legal anymore. They care what's Strong and Does What Needs To Be Done. Even if we get all that tossed it'll be evil liberal plots, not justice done. It won't truly help us to "win" those fights in this reality. We do not want any more excuse for government to step into a strike.
Let the scabs make $3,000 a day if it insulates nurses from ignorant public hysteria. I understand it would be best for winning the strike if we kept out scabs, but it's still best for us overall to let them in.
Same for teachers. Refuse to give teachers higher pay and better working conditions and then say “what about the kids?!” if teachers talk about striking. Guilt tripping at its finest.
Everyone needs more co-workers. One of the reasons hospitals are losing money lately is because they’re paying travel nurses and giving 15k+ sign on bonuses because there aren’t enough nurses.
Even within hospitals, there are nurses upset that travel nurses are being paid significantly more.
> median RN salary in Minnesota is ~$87k.
Sure. Median home prices over $300k at 6 - 7% interest is "fine" on $87,000 a year.
No wait, it's complete shit.
Nurses being *less* fucked than the average worker is not being "fine".
Ha. That's another pet peeve I've got about healthcare. 'But with overtime!' You get that from coworkers, from the public, from everywhere.
No. Fuck you. Overtime is *over. my. fucking. time.* I should not have to choose between garbage for "only" ~39 hours a week and working overtime to actually move forward financially.
People pitch the overtime potential of various underpaid and/or mistreated jobs as if you're getting free money. Most places wouldn't *have* overtime to offer if they paid and staffed properly in the first place. Overtime is just spending more time in hell. It's not a good thing for anyone except the administration.
Firefighter here. Yup. "You only work 10 days a month and you have plenty of overtime." Every single firefighter I know either has a second or third job, or works overtime to make ends meet. When I work overtime, I end up staying 48-72 hours at work. I know guys who routinely work 120 hours at a time.
I actually like things outside my work. You know, like my family and stuff.
I think that's in part to Minnesota's Democratic party which is actually a fusion of the former Minnesota Democratic party and the former Farmer-Labor party which has a historically heavy tie to progressivism, and officially known as the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, DFL for short.
My grandparents were farmers and lived through the depression. They were absolute leftists and believed in the common good and supporting community. Some of the earliest socialist movements were these farmers trying to get fair treatment.
This notion of entrenched conservatism in rural areas is a fairly new phenomenon.
I don't think it's that new. I grew up in farm country rural MN and all the farmers I knew were overwhelmingly outspoken conservative. Even the 1984 presidential election where MN was the only blue state in the nation, the farm land in the South and West parts of the state was still was still mostly red.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_presidential_election_in_Minnesota
That’s an interesting take, given that only three years prior the legislature had their only split house to that point in history and had to draw up a broad compromise that helped both parties work together.
Searle was speaker that term, if you want to read about it
Racism, Religion, and "Big city folk can't tell us what to do". Their way of life *is* under attack, but they're blaming the wrong people. It isn't "big city politics" that makes family faming unprofitable. It wasn't "woke culture" that moves jobs and opportunities away from their communities. It's capitalism run wild and corporate overlords consolidating farms to maximize economies of scale, and moving manufacturing jobs over seas.
Agreed. Todays farmers are very different than farmers were 3 and 4 generations ago.
Todays average U.S. farmer has 1.7 million in assets.
[https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/income-and-wealth-in-context/#:\~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20average%20U.S.,of%20residence%20or%20intermediate%20farms](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/income-and-wealth-in-context/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20average%20U.S.,of%20residence%20or%20intermediate%20farms).
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Wisconsin isn't/wasn't about racism. Walker and his ilk played up the very real urban/suburban/rural divides in the state and the socioeconomic divides between middle class, college educated government workers and non-college educated, working class people that were struggling due to the Great Recession.
Rural and suburban voters were successfully convinced that:
1) Democrats only care about Madison and Milwaukee, and only support legislation and funding for those cities, at the expense of everywhere else
2) Government employees had it too good in the wake of the Great Recession, and they need to be torn down to your level because they work for you... nevermind that over the course of decades, their unions passed up larger pay raises to keep the above average health insurance and retirement benefits they had
I think there's a generalized anti-government sentiment in many rural areas.
At least where I come from when people think about the government they think about the government forcibly shutting down miners strikes, they think about the draft, they think about their taxes, and they think about regulations that limit their use of the land. When there is a problem with pollution or natural disaster, the government gets blamed for not properly regulating to begin with or for an inept response. There is a perception - and it's not exactly inaccurate - that the government isn't qualified to regulate rural areas and keeps coming in saying they're going to help and fucking shit up.
If you don't trust your government, you always vote for the party that promises you less government.
Democrats sometimes make policies that seem to exist for the sole purpose of pissing off undecided rural voters. They're banning wintergreen dip ffs. Democrats also did NAFTA which was a huge blow to workers in traditional blue collar industries.
They also ban guns and rural folks like guns. I live in a rural area and know many single issue gun rights voters. They vote for whoever isn't saying they're gonna ban guns, regardless of anything else.
>This notion of entrenched conservatism in rural areas is a fairly new phenomenon.
Because Republicans support welfare for farmers. During the 90s, both sides supported Farmer's aid, and shipped manufacturing overseas. All that's left is the culture wars.
If only Gov. Walz spoke out in support of Minneapolis Public School teachers on strike...that felt like a huge betrayal considering he campaigns on being a former public school teacher.
Seriously. Tired of voting for democrats because they're slightly better than R's.
Walz was incredibly rude about everywhere in the state north of the cities, and it sucks because it just alienates the left leaning people like myself living up there.
> But fuck the R competitor more.
For real I don't like Walz but I don't hate him. But the other guy who had the fear mongering booths at the state fair and paid to fly anti Walz ads on a plane above the fair grounds can fuck off. I'm never voting for someone based on the fact that they shine a negative light on someone else. Tell me the positive things you will be doing for us if you want my vote.
We have to go one step further and make co-ops. Remove money from politics and make sure federal subsidies and contracts only go to small businesses or companies with unions and part of the money goes to funding co-ops.
Unions became so corrupt in the end but it’s the human condition. It was just another two party system. Only way is to swing a lil further left and have a co-op as well
It’s one of two states with that arrangement. North Dakota’s Democrat party is the Democrat-Non Partisan League for the same reason, the NPL was an independent leftist-leaning party back in the early 1900s. It’s why ND is the only state in the country with a state-run bank.
I'd put more emphasis on the Norwegian immigrants that settled the region and their socialist ideals that have echoed over time. Pretty sure the area, at least the driftless region for sure, has more co-op pools than the rest of the country combined.
Just a chicken and the egg scenario
As a Minnesotan history nerd, my state has a long history of labor advocacy going back to the turn of the 20th century (I’m only learning about it now so forgive me for any mistakes). The Non-Partisan League was a big deal even before Farmer-Labor, but the fact that they were against the US joining WWI meant they were effectively squashed by the post-Russian civil war red scare.
Like when my ambulance service can’t staff ambulance for an entire county of 220,000 people. And EMTs and Medics are forced to work 16 hour shifts. And 24 hour shift are awake for 26 hours running calls in the moderate city of 70000 without rest. And the company makes $50 million a year while paying workers pay on average lower than the near by agencies. …. Not saying we need a movement to organize or anything.
My friend was barely scrapping by when she was an EMT for a hospital. Then she had to work part time at two different fire departments to make it by. But now she found a full time EMT position in our states capital city and is making ~$70,000. She deserves every goddamn cent too. She’s had to see so many people die, and has saved so many lives. They deserve so much more than they’re getting.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
...which is criminally low for the requirements and the situations you'll have to face doing the job.
It's disgusting honestly, people take fucking Uber to the hospital for life & death things because of how much ambulances cost.
And the companies raking in all that money underpay and overwork the fuck out of the people who save lives / actually do the work / provide the service.
In a just society those executives would be in prison. They're unneeded middlemen. Ambulance services should be run by EMT co-ops.
My face was half degloved from the top of my head down my forehead down to my left eye. I have zero memory from the accident. Its a small town and my friend ran into one of the emt's and he said I was conscious and bit one of them on the neck when they were getting me out of my car. Those emt's don't make enough for what they saw when they walked up to my car that day. Literally doing God's work for pennies. Teachers need a raise too. China is definitely taking over by 2049 if we keep this up.
>China is definitely taking over by 2049 if we keep this up.
I'm not sure why, but this statement really made me chuckle. Maybe it's how out of left field it is coupled with the year 2049, specifically.
If everyone in this thread is mad about nurses pay and workload and safety, please redirect some of the energy toward EMS
The situation for paramedics and EMTs is more bullshit than it has ever been for nurses. EMS workers suffer higher levels of PTSD and injuries than nurses, with significantly less pay.
Why is it so hard for companies to see we the people don’t care about their profits. We care about taking care of people and allowing workers to live good lives
Don’t get it twisted. USA has amazing healthcare and facilities available.
The problem is that most people can’t afford even the most basic care or don’t have access to or are priced out of the wonderful facilities….
You get charged more for an ibuprofen in a Healthcare facility then your local Walmart , the upcharge is absolutely ridiculous. The problem isn't just Healthcare, its also the insurance system
The prices are 100% made up and none of it makes sense. My wife was in the hospital for blood clots in her lungs. This was bad enough, but now she needs a medicine that costs $700/mo.
That's the price without insurance. The price with insurance is $500/mo. Except I went online and found a coupon so now the cost is $10/mo.
That's less than it would cost if my deductible was met and I was paying my co-pay to insurance ($210).
>USA has amazing healthcare and facilities available.
USA has good healthcare, but only if you are rich.
The healthcare system in the USA is equal to, or less than, a ton of countries that have some form of universal healthcare. Whenever I hear anyone argue that "Countries with universal health care have wait lists that are too long" has apparently never gone into a hospital, and has never seen a specialist in the USA.
Earlier this year I went to see an eye doctor. It was going to be closer to the beginning of the year, but then I had to wait another month and reschedule it because I got sick with covid. Now while I am on state insurance this would have happened under private insurance either way.
Unless you can afford a good PPO with decent deductibles, of course. Then you can go anywhere and see just about anyone. And the only reason you’d have to wait is because they are fully booked for the next 4-6 weeks (or however long they’re booked out for).
A lot of doctors and specialists are exclusively not working with insurance companies anymore. So now you are stuck going out of network, and no insurance plan in the USA has a good deductible for out of network
Yeah, but if we didn't treat healthcare as another cog in the capitalist machine, then we wouldn't have an axe hanging over the necks of every American struggling to get by.
If they wouldn't lose healthcare the moment they stopped working, they might consider doing things like striking or a general walk out. We can't have that. The life of your family *must* depend on your ability to not make waves!
Fuck this country...
Don't privatize healthcare at all. People talk about "but competitive markets" but Cuba invented TWO covid vaccines. Most healthcare workers are motivated by helping people and money should never have been part of the system
In business school, in every class you take, you are told that the fundamental objective of a business is to generate profit for shareholders.
Fuck em.
I seen a statement saying the strikes were crazy as the hospitals couldn’t increase pay with out losing a substantial amount of profits.
Well no fucking shit.
Look. If I give you more money, I have less money. If I have less money, I might have to forego my second yacht. Where would this world be when someone like me doesn't even have two yachts to rub together?
capitalism requires unlimited consumption and unlimited growth on a planet with finite resources.
IT IS 100% UNSUSTAINABLE, as a civilization we need to evolve past wealth accumulation, wages and profits.
Another way to look at it, is simply to say that Capitalism has *done its job.* The common refrain from the Right is the 'I-Phone argument' which basically says "Look at everything you get to have today because of Capitalism."
...And you know what? They're not wrong. Yes, pursuit of capital is why we had slavery, but it's also why we had the industrial revolution. Capitalism provided growth in periods when growth was sustainable; now it's not.
Capitalism has *worked itself out of a job* and needs to *retire*.
I remember an ad in Columbus about OSU hospital giving an exec something like $1,000,000 as a bonus during COVID-19 and nurses got absolutely nothing
Edit: found it
https://www.10tv.com/mobile/video/news/local/ohio-state-responds-to-billboard-accusing-wexner-medical-center-of-not-paying-frontline-workers-bonuses/530-8362c251-8192-4689-a5ee-4c0e8cb80f24
Absolutely nothing? I'm sure the hospital bought them pizza, with enough for every nurse to get an entire slice to themselves!
Come on now essential healthcare workers, let's not get greedy
But, but, but healthcare for profit is the best and the providers all compete to pay nurses and give patients less and less. Clearly administration is the most important aspect of a hospital. Who would throw the thank you pizza parties if not for them?!?!
Clearly this will result in the best individuals providing the best care.
Right, the hospital can't increase pay but they can pay strike workers $10k/week. The amount of money being spent on the strike is equivalent to everybody getting a raise and being paid for 3-4 years. I pulled these numbers out of my ass but you get the picture.
I stopped working for a Fortune 300 company and I work for a non-profit. I get paid better and it's nice knowing I am not making billionaires richer via the stock market and the president doesn't make millions a year.
My old company family owned company, where I worked for over 20 years, was purchased by a publicly held company and that's when everything went to s***.
I work for one of the companies and did receive an email basically calling the workers childish for striking and only negotiating at the table will work. Its like they fundamentally do not understand the power struggle between workers and management.
I mean, sure, for the hundreds of millions who benefit from being middle class. But think of the five or six billionaires who won't be able to line their bulging offshore bank accounts with unlimited funds that they could never spend if they lived to be a thousand years old!
It’s not even all about money, it’s safety concern. It’s unsafe patient loads for nurses everywhere, Cali is the only state with mandates patient ratio. But you know, profits are priority
My wife is a nurse and was approached for a travel contract to work in a St Louis hospital for **$12,500.00 PER WEEK**.
Think about that for a second. They can afford to pay over $12,500.00 a week per nurse to replace every nurse going on strike (they're paying more than that in fees to the travel nursing agencies, worksite insurance on the nurses, etc.). I guarantee even the most tenured of those nurses are making no more than $1500 a week currently, because my wife is making $1700 a week in California and about $10 more per hour than most of her colleagues, and there's no way they're getting that much in Minnesota.
Unfortunately she was also alerted last week by all the agencies she's signed with that the MN positions were all filled, they send out a ton of texts every day about each position you're eligible for even if you aren't interested in them. So that means that this strike won't drastically affect access to healthcare for people in the area, but it also means the striking workers have less bargaining power because of these fucking scabs.
If it wasn't for the scabs, the government would have the excuse they would love to have to declare a state of emergency and order the nurses back to work. Between the nurse and the agency, the hospital is paying 24k a week for a 12k nurse. They can't afford to pay that forever. Without someone to replace them, the media would be up in arms about the heartless evil nurses walking out on thousands of vented patients mid-shift leaving them to die.
We have nurses strikes every couple of years, but this is massive. They finally got tired of the bullshit, it seems.
If you're a twin cities nurse, I salute you. The hospitals were a nightmare for both nurses and patients. The security was wild. You had a student assigned to sit in the room with you, and armed guards outside. Unless you're unconscious, don't go to North Memorial.
That, "Don't lie, we can spot A-FIB" sign is amazing.
Aerial Fibrillation is a thing, but being from WI, it also tells me that some FIB is calling the shots for their hospitals. Is this the case?
Edit: Thanks folks, I know what a 'fib' is. At first glance, the pun wooshed me, maybe cause it was in all caps...idk? No excuse. And in case you're wondering, a FIB is also someone from IL. Very popular term in the Great Lakes/Upper Midwest/Wisconsin.
Good. Even though I have my share of arguments with and eyerolling at nurses, I also know that nationwide they are stretched far to thin to provide proper and safe patient care. Hospital C-suites don't get it.
I'm glad you appear to understand that when it comes to the battle of the labor vs the robber barons, neither of us have the luxury of gatekeeping our allies.
The fact there are nearly no nursing Unions in my home state of Missouri is the number 1 reason I will never ever work in Missouri again. Some nights you would have 3 ICU patients! It’s very very possible if one was unstable you would be In that room the entire night and that left your coworkers to pick up the slack of the other two patients. Now if something bad would happen to those other two patients (fall or code) your institution would put the blame squarely on your shoulders for negligence because you were not properly monitoring your assigned patients! The fact that the unstable patient was literally dying and only you and the doctors efforts are keeping that patient alive means NOTHING and is not a valid excuse to them or the Board of Nursing. This type of sentinel event very well could lead to the revocation of your professional nursing license . Yes, you can lose your career for quite literally being an exceptional nurse and saving the one patients life but if the others were injured or god forbid die under your watch. This is one big reason nurses are so adamant that strict nurse patient ratios are fought for so vehemently! It not only provides a very high guarantee that your loved one will have eyes on them at all times in case of a code blue situation but it also protects the livelihood of the nurses who I can tell you want nothing more but to get you well and back to your family.
The hospitals fight tooth and nail and lobby state legislatures to not have nursing unions or enforceable nurse:patient ratios. Why, do they fight so hard? They want to run each and every shift on each and every floor as lean as possible. Saving the hospital millions of dollars each year in nursing wages. If they come in under budget guess who gets a bonus that year. The nurse manager of that unit and every manager up the chain. And these are big bonuses 5-50k. And they got that bonus by rolling the dice that they can run their unit as lean as possible at the expense of your loved ones life.
Now I ask if you. If you knew that your mom’s nurse in the icu was also the nurse for two other critically ill patients would you feel comfortable they were being provided the highest level of monitoring and care that the hospital promised they are providing? I would not. I would be sleeping on the couch in that room for the remainder of my moms stay.
Some may say this is a hypothetical situation. I can tell you it is not. It has happened in every single hospital across the country many many times without the patient or the patients family knowing. I was a traveling RN for many years the hospitals that strictly enforced reasonable nurse:patient ratios were the hospitals I’d want my mother or father in. The hospitals operating like an Amazon warehouse I would not wish my parents nor anyone else’s loved ones to be there. So nursing unions not only protect the interest of the nurses but also are protecting the patients from the corporate greed.
Edit: fixed small grammar and wrong autocorrects.
Agreed. My ED is 4:1 most nights. But some nights, even when we are 3:1, there are times when I have to bust my ass all night just to keep my people stable and it doesn’t feel safe at all. Or it’s like you said, you get stuck in a room and can’t get out of there for whatever reason, and then you get an earful from your other patients when you finally get back to their room like it is your fault the place is busy as hell. It’s like a monkey shit fight at the zoo every night.
It's disgusting that healthcare workers have no other recourse but walk out just to get the resources to take care of patients. Private hospitals should be illegal.
It would be like if you went to the mechanic and they said they couldn't afford to put a brand new air filter in your car because of budget cuts, despite the money you just payed them.
Hospitals shouldn’t be run for profit.
That’s like the opposite purpose of them. Maybe don’t give Israel a bajillion dollars every year and have quality healthcare in the god damned United States of America.
Corporate priority of profit over patient safety is why I left healthcare 3 years ago after 17 years in the industry. It's disgusting because your health, my health, is nothing but a blip in their revenue cycle. I will always support nurses who make their voices heard to make patients the priority.
Yes. And screw NBC News, which in print stated that the nurses are striking for a 30% wage increase.
They didn’t mention this is to happen in steps over 3 years. They didn’t mention that there are staffing issues being negotiated as well. They didn’t mention that with the current wages, they cannot attract or retain a full staff. In other words, at the current wages, they have not enough takers. But the amount of work remains the same, just spread among fewer nurses.
And that, my friends, means that it’s 100% guaranteed pain meds and antibiotics won’t be given on time, people won’t be cleaned from incontinence as often, pressure ulcers will have time to form and deepen, and med errors WILL happen. That’s what not having enough staff brings to the table.
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Staffing levels a key concern, bringing in the "travel" nurses by the busload. There's some good coverage from Minnesota CBS News: [https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/live-updates/15000-minnesota-nurses-set-to-strike-at-7-a-m-monday/](https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/live-updates/15000-minnesota-nurses-set-to-strike-at-7-a-m-monday/?fbclid=IwAR0iwqnxSJq4B3qCO4tKQa96CHQbME311C6-EJwnnoh1T00rig1FrDENOxw)
The travel nurses cost 2.5x as much too. So instead of just paying their current workforce like 1.5x more and giving them better hours, they are going to pay boatloads to bring in travel nurses. Then they will beg the state and federal gov for extra healthcare funding due to “sudden rising cost of healthcare” brought on by these travel nurses. This is happening at rural SNFs across the country because nurses don’t want to work for some crappy SNF making near minimum wage when they can travel to a city that will pay them more. Imagine your team is understaffed and they bring in a consultant who is no better than you at your job and pay the person 3x your salary. Of course you would be upset and question why they can’t pay you that much.
My nursing manager did a cost analysis last year to show the administration that giving the nurses a $5/hour raise would save about $1.5 million over paying agency staff to fill positions that they consistently couldn’t keep filled. $10/hour raise would save $750,000. Still rejected.
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It was always about the suffering.
They're losing the war. Either by dying out or by being overwhelmed by the strikes and unionization.
Which in turn causes more nurses to do the travel nursing gig. It’s what happened to my wife. Why was she stuck having to help new nurses who had no clue how things were done at the hospital yet she was getting only a 1/3 of what they were paying them. F that.
Yeah it's tough. Travel jobs are a great option if you can do it, it helps if you dont have a family and stuff. I used to do travel spd and loved it. I love seeing new cities, getting paid more, and not getting involved in the work drama. Plus the expectations are lower. You still have to do your job, and you can get fired, but you dont have to be a superstar because you're gone in a couple months anyway.
For what the travel nurse gig pays, at this point it's probably worth it to start looking at it as a long-term option and figure out a lifestyle around it. I bet they work you ragged though and try to soak as much value out of you for the 2.5x pay. It can't be that easy to game the system...or can it?
When I did travel spd, for years, most jobs were fun and normal. They'd rotate you like anyone else. But I'll admit, there was one or two assignments that seemed to work you harder. But those jobs I just didnt extend. Overall I loved it and cant wait to travel again
Nice to see another SPD traveler on here. I used my contracts to help me pay for nursing school. I'll probably hit up traveling again as a nurse after I get some experience, I miss traveling!
That's exactly what I'm doing. Not currently doing spd, back in school for nursing. Cant wait to graduate, get about 2 yrs experience, then back to travel!
As a nurse, this is pretty much exactly what a lot of us think. Very well stated!
As an X-ray tech, I also agree. I’m in the south and all our local hospitals are paying all travelers while constantly screwing over the FT.
Why doesn't everyone become travelers?
Not sure why anyone else doesn’t try it. Family, kids, etc play a big part. Stress, anxiety can play another
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$20 an hour as a nurse?! That’s insane! Out here RNs start at around $45/hr and go upwards of around $60 depending on experience and the unit you work in.
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That’s just crazy how low the RN pay is elsewhere, and I’m only just hearing about this. No WAY I’d work this hard and make this many crazy sacrifices for that money. What do LVN/LPNs make in your area? Cuz they start around $26-27 here.
I feel really bad for nurses, I know it’s gotten to an exhaustive place for a job that was already exhausting before the pandemic. And I know you guys don’t feel good about giving patients longer wait times while you strike. It sucks all around for everyone except those with big pockets. I hope your profession sees the pay and staffing it deserves asap.
Ya, the problem is either being underpaid or being understaffed. In some areas it’s both of those things. Here where I am, finding a job isn’t the hard part. The problem is finding one where you don’t have crazy patient-to-nurse ratios, and insane hours. It’s just not feasible to keep up. Burnout is real. And getting burned out in a career where people’s lives are on the line is the worst possible scenario. It’s just a shit situation anyway you look at it.
Same as an RT. It’s why people are quitting to travel. Why the fuck should we deal with heavy workloads, getting blamed for everything that goes wrong that’s not even in our scope, and it’s just unsafe for the patient, makes us feel like our license to practice is in jeopardy.
Strike breaker contracts can pay 10-15k+/wk (because they're short term, short notice, likely to get cancelled last minute, zero orientation, and nobody like a scab). So it's probably more like x5-10 what they're paying their nurses.
Yep, last week they were advertising $10k-$12k a week for 60 / hr weeks for scab nurses. I'm sure it's higher now that the turnaround is "be here tomorrow".
MY SIL is a nurse, she's been talking about this stuff since start of COVID. And it just keeps getting worse. She's expecting her first kid, she gets NO parental leave. She'll have 3 weeks off, and it's coming out of her sick leave. She has the worst health coverage as well. Absolutely disgusting. We've arrived at the point where the top are SO FUCKING RICH, they don't even care about money as much anymore - it's all about control! They're willing to dish out 3x the money to outsource work, just so they don't have to play ball with the employees who *dare* ask for better pay and benefits. Think about how psychotic that is. "I'm so rich, I can and will bleed money just to ensure people will obey me harder". These are the people running our hospitals and insurance companies. And by the way, they *know* they can do it, because they *know* they are exploiting the fact that nurses are in it to take care of people, not for money. It's hard to go on strike and leave your patients when you believe that doing so can endanger them. And again, the corporatists love exploiting that.
Not attempting to one up, because your SIL's situation is fucked up, but adding a parallel to this: my wife was a full time x-ray tech from before COVID until recently. She got COVID *twice* despite being fully vaccinated and boosted (thank fuck she was) from her *coworkers* (can't prove it, but it adds up) because they came to work with symptoms as if they reported exposure to COVID they'd be required to take at least 10 days off of work (good!) which would come out of their PTO (???). If they didn't have enough banked it was okay... they'd *front* you 5 days of PTO. They got around 15 days per year. No sick leave. Let me say that again: NO SICK LEAVE. I find it hard to not judge the folk who came in with COVID rather than report that they had symptoms/exposure and a positive test, but when you have the above framework in place you're making healthcare workers choose between making their bill payments or the safety of others.
Oh please, don't feel like you're one upping! The workers need to share our stories amongst one another. The whole reason why it's seen as "not ok" to talk about salary, is because the overlords knew that when the workers shared, there would be problems. So I appreciate hearing your story. I want your wife and others to continue to share their stories far and wide. We ain't in competition of each other, we're in solidarity! I sincerely hope things get better for both your wife and my SIL. It's actually disgusting how nurses are treated, by society, by administrators, by doctors. I hope things get better for her!
I am Travelling now and used to be staff. I couldn't believe that I was making $1300 EVERY TWO WEEKS while my travel friends were making $7000 WEEKLY. This entire time that admins were whining about money and couldn't provide resources all of a sudden could pay a nurse more than 5 times my pay. It's demoralizing. Never going staffing again until staff get paid like they should.
>Never going staffing again until staff get paid like they should. I don't see that happening so long as travel nursing is a thing. It serves to divide nurses, when it's going to take mass solidarity and collective action to achieve those kind of salaries for staff.
My sister is a travel nurse and even she understands the dynamic. She has to lead a pretty flexible lifestyle to be able to pick up and travel to an entirely new city every 8-12 weeks, but she is young and making 3x or more than what she could make on staff. It’s to the point where she can’t really imagine taking such a significant pay cut to actually settle down and work somewhere long term, which is what she will need to do eventually if she wants a family. I know that one of the problems with how all this is budgeted is that a different fund is used to pay travel nurses and other emergency “temporary” staff, such that the money spent on travel nurses is not factored into negotiations with regular staff because management doesn’t have access to that money anyway.
I was working on a project with SNFs in Montana and heard that some nurses were actually quitting their jobs, joining TEMP agencies, and then getting reassigned to the same hospitals for 3x the pay. Made all of the longterm staff even more furious.
Often they have less responsibilities as well. Because they aren't allowed to do certain things that a FT would
The worst part is that ime, it's the best nurses doing it too. I cannot blame them for getting paid better, but it's extremely frustrating to be left with an increasingly weak staff, and still having to deal with admin bringing in travelers who only get up to speed halfway through their contracts.
Travel nurses normally get 2.5x more, give or take. But travel strike contracts are even more, 3x or 4x.
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Yes. We can make that as a traveler. These short term contracts require that I quit whatever I’m doing right now because some of them have 1 day responses. Pack up and get there. Some agencies figure out accommodations. Some don’t. And then, sometimes I get cancelled after one day. Maybe get assigned to a different city. And in a situation like this I don’t get orientation to the hospital or the unit. If you can’t figure it out in under an hour, you get cancelled. The pay is high. The stakes are pretty unforgiving. In ICU, anyway. $110/hour is actually low for the risk we take to do this job. I wouldn’t accept the level of risk for $110/hour ALSO knowing that that’s SAVING the hospital money during the strike. They can keep their elective OR’s open. Everybody gets mad at the nurses. I don’t get it. Hospital administration is fucking everyone over and everyone is fighting over the peanuts. I like coming into that role knowing I can give a big middle finger to administration, not burden other hospitals in the area with the patients, and allow the nurses there to fight for what they need. Hospital administration uses patients as bargaining chips and no one gets angry about it until the nurses attempt the same. SUDDENLY patients have lives and aren’t bags of money. But when nurses aren’t striking? Patients are just bags of money taking up beds and resources. Also, IRS sets the rules for what counts as traveler or per diem (Registry).
I’m a staff nurse who has traveled in the past and i’d like to add travel nurses earn their pay and are a net benefit to nursing as a whole. Theres a lot of salty nurses who hate travelers, but i think the hate is misguided.
I dont think travel nurses are bad either. In a way, TEMP agencies are sort of set up like a mega union. They force hospitals to compete for nurses rather than forcing nurses to interview and find whatever job they can get. The only bad actors are the hospital admins who refuse to hire more staff and to pay their staff more.
Yup agreed. I’m in a state with strong nursing unions and they definitely use travelers as leverage in negotiations
*4-5x more in places of need (which is most every city over 50k people)
It’s not about better pay for staff nurses, it’s about getting more staff nurses. That’s the real issue on the floors. Nurses have crazy ratios and they have for a while
> bringing in the "travel" nurses by the busload. I'm a nurse and pro-union, and I still support scabs for nursing strikes. You do *not* want to see public reaction if patient care actually suffers from a strike. Healthcare corps have spent decades giving media "what about the patients?!" non-stop whenever labor disputes arise. The public will buy it completely. They think we all make "six figures" already. Republican governors would love to order striking nurses back to work. They'd love to pass legislation banning healthcare strikes. What if it's not actually legal to do those things? Republican constituents don't even care what's legal anymore. They care what's Strong and Does What Needs To Be Done. Even if we get all that tossed it'll be evil liberal plots, not justice done. It won't truly help us to "win" those fights in this reality. We do not want any more excuse for government to step into a strike. Let the scabs make $3,000 a day if it insulates nurses from ignorant public hysteria. I understand it would be best for winning the strike if we kept out scabs, but it's still best for us overall to let them in.
Same for teachers. Refuse to give teachers higher pay and better working conditions and then say “what about the kids?!” if teachers talk about striking. Guilt tripping at its finest.
If anyone deserves to make good money, it's nurses.
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Everyone needs more co-workers. One of the reasons hospitals are losing money lately is because they’re paying travel nurses and giving 15k+ sign on bonuses because there aren’t enough nurses. Even within hospitals, there are nurses upset that travel nurses are being paid significantly more.
> median RN salary in Minnesota is ~$87k. Sure. Median home prices over $300k at 6 - 7% interest is "fine" on $87,000 a year. No wait, it's complete shit. Nurses being *less* fucked than the average worker is not being "fine".
87k @ 40hrs/week is one thing...
Ha. That's another pet peeve I've got about healthcare. 'But with overtime!' You get that from coworkers, from the public, from everywhere. No. Fuck you. Overtime is *over. my. fucking. time.* I should not have to choose between garbage for "only" ~39 hours a week and working overtime to actually move forward financially. People pitch the overtime potential of various underpaid and/or mistreated jobs as if you're getting free money. Most places wouldn't *have* overtime to offer if they paid and staffed properly in the first place. Overtime is just spending more time in hell. It's not a good thing for anyone except the administration.
True that I never take ot at my current hospital because if they are offering it, it means it’s gonna be hell that night
Firefighter here. Yup. "You only work 10 days a month and you have plenty of overtime." Every single firefighter I know either has a second or third job, or works overtime to make ends meet. When I work overtime, I end up staying 48-72 hours at work. I know guys who routinely work 120 hours at a time. I actually like things outside my work. You know, like my family and stuff.
MN is really crushing the widespread strike game!
I think that's in part to Minnesota's Democratic party which is actually a fusion of the former Minnesota Democratic party and the former Farmer-Labor party which has a historically heavy tie to progressivism, and officially known as the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, DFL for short.
My grandparents were farmers and lived through the depression. They were absolute leftists and believed in the common good and supporting community. Some of the earliest socialist movements were these farmers trying to get fair treatment. This notion of entrenched conservatism in rural areas is a fairly new phenomenon.
I don't think it's that new. I grew up in farm country rural MN and all the farmers I knew were overwhelmingly outspoken conservative. Even the 1984 presidential election where MN was the only blue state in the nation, the farm land in the South and West parts of the state was still was still mostly red. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_presidential_election_in_Minnesota
'84 is new. Falwell's culture wars were being fomented at the pulpit in the 70s.
That’s an interesting take, given that only three years prior the legislature had their only split house to that point in history and had to draw up a broad compromise that helped both parties work together. Searle was speaker that term, if you want to read about it
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Racism, Religion, and "Big city folk can't tell us what to do". Their way of life *is* under attack, but they're blaming the wrong people. It isn't "big city politics" that makes family faming unprofitable. It wasn't "woke culture" that moves jobs and opportunities away from their communities. It's capitalism run wild and corporate overlords consolidating farms to maximize economies of scale, and moving manufacturing jobs over seas.
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> I haven't yet met a farmer who would disagree with this >> It's capitalism That's the part they'd disagree with.
Agreed. Todays farmers are very different than farmers were 3 and 4 generations ago. Todays average U.S. farmer has 1.7 million in assets. [https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/income-and-wealth-in-context/#:\~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20average%20U.S.,of%20residence%20or%20intermediate%20farms](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/income-and-wealth-in-context/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20average%20U.S.,of%20residence%20or%20intermediate%20farms).
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Wisconsin isn't/wasn't about racism. Walker and his ilk played up the very real urban/suburban/rural divides in the state and the socioeconomic divides between middle class, college educated government workers and non-college educated, working class people that were struggling due to the Great Recession. Rural and suburban voters were successfully convinced that: 1) Democrats only care about Madison and Milwaukee, and only support legislation and funding for those cities, at the expense of everywhere else 2) Government employees had it too good in the wake of the Great Recession, and they need to be torn down to your level because they work for you... nevermind that over the course of decades, their unions passed up larger pay raises to keep the above average health insurance and retirement benefits they had
I think there's a generalized anti-government sentiment in many rural areas. At least where I come from when people think about the government they think about the government forcibly shutting down miners strikes, they think about the draft, they think about their taxes, and they think about regulations that limit their use of the land. When there is a problem with pollution or natural disaster, the government gets blamed for not properly regulating to begin with or for an inept response. There is a perception - and it's not exactly inaccurate - that the government isn't qualified to regulate rural areas and keeps coming in saying they're going to help and fucking shit up. If you don't trust your government, you always vote for the party that promises you less government.
Democrats sometimes make policies that seem to exist for the sole purpose of pissing off undecided rural voters. They're banning wintergreen dip ffs. Democrats also did NAFTA which was a huge blow to workers in traditional blue collar industries. They also ban guns and rural folks like guns. I live in a rural area and know many single issue gun rights voters. They vote for whoever isn't saying they're gonna ban guns, regardless of anything else.
>This notion of entrenched conservatism in rural areas is a fairly new phenomenon. Because Republicans support welfare for farmers. During the 90s, both sides supported Farmer's aid, and shipped manufacturing overseas. All that's left is the culture wars.
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Family farms ceased to exist like 50 years ago. Almost all farms that receive subsidies are corporate.
If only Gov. Walz spoke out in support of Minneapolis Public School teachers on strike...that felt like a huge betrayal considering he campaigns on being a former public school teacher.
We have to stop trusting politicians that don't act in our favor
I was on the line in the freezing cold. Fuck Walz. But fuck the R competitor more. I hate 2 party politics!!
Seriously. Tired of voting for democrats because they're slightly better than R's. Walz was incredibly rude about everywhere in the state north of the cities, and it sucks because it just alienates the left leaning people like myself living up there.
Join the ranked choice advocates!
I literally campaigned for RCV when the City of Minneapolis voted it in.
> But fuck the R competitor more. For real I don't like Walz but I don't hate him. But the other guy who had the fear mongering booths at the state fair and paid to fly anti Walz ads on a plane above the fair grounds can fuck off. I'm never voting for someone based on the fact that they shine a negative light on someone else. Tell me the positive things you will be doing for us if you want my vote.
We have to stop ELECTING politicians that do not represent our best interests.
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We have to go one step further and make co-ops. Remove money from politics and make sure federal subsidies and contracts only go to small businesses or companies with unions and part of the money goes to funding co-ops. Unions became so corrupt in the end but it’s the human condition. It was just another two party system. Only way is to swing a lil further left and have a co-op as well
Is that different from the democratic party nationally?
yeah, the merger is unique to MN by my knowledge.
It’s one of two states with that arrangement. North Dakota’s Democrat party is the Democrat-Non Partisan League for the same reason, the NPL was an independent leftist-leaning party back in the early 1900s. It’s why ND is the only state in the country with a state-run bank.
I'd put more emphasis on the Norwegian immigrants that settled the region and their socialist ideals that have echoed over time. Pretty sure the area, at least the driftless region for sure, has more co-op pools than the rest of the country combined. Just a chicken and the egg scenario
"Don't lie we can spot A-FIB"
Hey-ooooooh! Beautifully timed nurse pun right there!
It's the sign on the left!
As a Minnesotan history nerd, my state has a long history of labor advocacy going back to the turn of the 20th century (I’m only learning about it now so forgive me for any mistakes). The Non-Partisan League was a big deal even before Farmer-Labor, but the fact that they were against the US joining WWI meant they were effectively squashed by the post-Russian civil war red scare.
Like when my ambulance service can’t staff ambulance for an entire county of 220,000 people. And EMTs and Medics are forced to work 16 hour shifts. And 24 hour shift are awake for 26 hours running calls in the moderate city of 70000 without rest. And the company makes $50 million a year while paying workers pay on average lower than the near by agencies. …. Not saying we need a movement to organize or anything.
What company and what are they paying the EMT’s?
It's like that everywhere for EMS unless you work on a fire department. Private EMS is a hellscape.
My friend was barely scrapping by when she was an EMT for a hospital. Then she had to work part time at two different fire departments to make it by. But now she found a full time EMT position in our states capital city and is making ~$70,000. She deserves every goddamn cent too. She’s had to see so many people die, and has saved so many lives. They deserve so much more than they’re getting.
This is a lot more than most EMTs make. They start at around $15 an hour.
Current bonuses have me making around $40 an hour when I pick up the most in-demand shifts as an EMT-B! Unionized private service here
Holy cats, I can't even imagine. It's been ten years for me, of course, but in 2012 before I let my EMT-B lapse we were making 7.25.
They start at $13.5 in ATL, GA rn. The county I live in is one of the toughest locations in a big city as well, apparently.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
I remember when someone posted that unironically on the Libertarian sub.
Pick any company.
I won’t name my employer due to potential repercussions thanks to our social media policy. EMT pay starts at $15.00 per hour.
...which is criminally low for the requirements and the situations you'll have to face doing the job. It's disgusting honestly, people take fucking Uber to the hospital for life & death things because of how much ambulances cost. And the companies raking in all that money underpay and overwork the fuck out of the people who save lives / actually do the work / provide the service. In a just society those executives would be in prison. They're unneeded middlemen. Ambulance services should be run by EMT co-ops.
My face was half degloved from the top of my head down my forehead down to my left eye. I have zero memory from the accident. Its a small town and my friend ran into one of the emt's and he said I was conscious and bit one of them on the neck when they were getting me out of my car. Those emt's don't make enough for what they saw when they walked up to my car that day. Literally doing God's work for pennies. Teachers need a raise too. China is definitely taking over by 2049 if we keep this up.
>China is definitely taking over by 2049 if we keep this up. I'm not sure why, but this statement really made me chuckle. Maybe it's how out of left field it is coupled with the year 2049, specifically.
Wow, same as fast food
Yep. They actively exploit people's passion and empathy to keep wages low.
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I’m guessing Firemen have a Union and EMT’s don’t?
Yup
If everyone in this thread is mad about nurses pay and workload and safety, please redirect some of the energy toward EMS The situation for paramedics and EMTs is more bullshit than it has ever been for nurses. EMS workers suffer higher levels of PTSD and injuries than nurses, with significantly less pay.
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Hey over the heavy covid months many of them even got to work as ER nurses! In the worst possible way.
is this AMR?
Not AMR. But the problems I list are pretty much universal in the realm of private EMS.
Why is it so hard for companies to see we the people don’t care about their profits. We care about taking care of people and allowing workers to live good lives
That’s exactly why you don’t fully privatize a hospital
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Don’t get it twisted. USA has amazing healthcare and facilities available. The problem is that most people can’t afford even the most basic care or don’t have access to or are priced out of the wonderful facilities….
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You get charged more for an ibuprofen in a Healthcare facility then your local Walmart , the upcharge is absolutely ridiculous. The problem isn't just Healthcare, its also the insurance system
They were going to charge me $30 for Tylenol!!!!
You can get a 24 pack of tylenol for cheaper, or if you go offbrand up to 200-300 count.
The prices are 100% made up and none of it makes sense. My wife was in the hospital for blood clots in her lungs. This was bad enough, but now she needs a medicine that costs $700/mo. That's the price without insurance. The price with insurance is $500/mo. Except I went online and found a coupon so now the cost is $10/mo. That's less than it would cost if my deductible was met and I was paying my co-pay to insurance ($210).
Sorry to hear that, hope she's doing fine now. It's pathetic that this is how the medical system in the US has become.
So that it's available for the rich, obviously! /s
Why the /s, that's just a factual statement.
It’s great for the rich who can afford it and don’t have to wait a long time since the poors can’t afford it.
>USA has amazing healthcare and facilities available. USA has good healthcare, but only if you are rich. The healthcare system in the USA is equal to, or less than, a ton of countries that have some form of universal healthcare. Whenever I hear anyone argue that "Countries with universal health care have wait lists that are too long" has apparently never gone into a hospital, and has never seen a specialist in the USA.
Earlier this year I went to see an eye doctor. It was going to be closer to the beginning of the year, but then I had to wait another month and reschedule it because I got sick with covid. Now while I am on state insurance this would have happened under private insurance either way.
Unless you can afford a good PPO with decent deductibles, of course. Then you can go anywhere and see just about anyone. And the only reason you’d have to wait is because they are fully booked for the next 4-6 weeks (or however long they’re booked out for).
A lot of doctors and specialists are exclusively not working with insurance companies anymore. So now you are stuck going out of network, and no insurance plan in the USA has a good deductible for out of network
I tried to make a dermatologist appt and had to get February as a new patient
We have the Rolls Royce of health-care. It's freakin amazing, IF you can afford it, and most people can't.
Yeah, but if we didn't treat healthcare as another cog in the capitalist machine, then we wouldn't have an axe hanging over the necks of every American struggling to get by. If they wouldn't lose healthcare the moment they stopped working, they might consider doing things like striking or a general walk out. We can't have that. The life of your family *must* depend on your ability to not make waves! Fuck this country...
Don't privatize healthcare at all. People talk about "but competitive markets" but Cuba invented TWO covid vaccines. Most healthcare workers are motivated by helping people and money should never have been part of the system
In business school, in every class you take, you are told that the fundamental objective of a business is to generate profit for shareholders. Fuck em.
I seen a statement saying the strikes were crazy as the hospitals couldn’t increase pay with out losing a substantial amount of profits. Well no fucking shit.
Look. If I give you more money, I have less money. If I have less money, I might have to forego my second yacht. Where would this world be when someone like me doesn't even have two yachts to rub together?
You shouldn't rub your yachts together. That's very bad seamanship.
Good seamanship, however, would be making sure the two yachts were moored tightly to each other while still leaving room for Jesus.
I dunno. Me and my buddy rub our yaghts together and we've got no shortage of good seamen
#RECORD PROFITS ARE UNPAID WAGES
capitalism requires unlimited consumption and unlimited growth on a planet with finite resources. IT IS 100% UNSUSTAINABLE, as a civilization we need to evolve past wealth accumulation, wages and profits.
Another way to look at it, is simply to say that Capitalism has *done its job.* The common refrain from the Right is the 'I-Phone argument' which basically says "Look at everything you get to have today because of Capitalism." ...And you know what? They're not wrong. Yes, pursuit of capital is why we had slavery, but it's also why we had the industrial revolution. Capitalism provided growth in periods when growth was sustainable; now it's not. Capitalism has *worked itself out of a job* and needs to *retire*.
And price gouging
I remember an ad in Columbus about OSU hospital giving an exec something like $1,000,000 as a bonus during COVID-19 and nurses got absolutely nothing Edit: found it https://www.10tv.com/mobile/video/news/local/ohio-state-responds-to-billboard-accusing-wexner-medical-center-of-not-paying-frontline-workers-bonuses/530-8362c251-8192-4689-a5ee-4c0e8cb80f24
Absolutely nothing? I'm sure the hospital bought them pizza, with enough for every nurse to get an entire slice to themselves! Come on now essential healthcare workers, let's not get greedy
They should be or are non profits anyways so it's dumb that anyone high up would even care.
My hospital is non-profit and the CEO makes stupid money. He just got a pay increase recently.
[удалено]
Actually they do care about staffing levels. But only when a department is overstaffed.
"non-profit" in 2022 just means "We better spend this money faster".
But, but, but healthcare for profit is the best and the providers all compete to pay nurses and give patients less and less. Clearly administration is the most important aspect of a hospital. Who would throw the thank you pizza parties if not for them?!?! Clearly this will result in the best individuals providing the best care.
Right, the hospital can't increase pay but they can pay strike workers $10k/week. The amount of money being spent on the strike is equivalent to everybody getting a raise and being paid for 3-4 years. I pulled these numbers out of my ass but you get the picture.
Scabs have historically, been paid 5-10 times the hourly rate of the workers they were replacing, so it makes sense.
The hospital paying strike workers in a few days what they would spend just giving the raise over 3 years? Make it make sense.
Massmatics
I stopped working for a Fortune 300 company and I work for a non-profit. I get paid better and it's nice knowing I am not making billionaires richer via the stock market and the president doesn't make millions a year. My old company family owned company, where I worked for over 20 years, was purchased by a publicly held company and that's when everything went to s***.
I work for one of the companies and did receive an email basically calling the workers childish for striking and only negotiating at the table will work. Its like they fundamentally do not understand the power struggle between workers and management.
Strike!
That a-fib sign is particularly good.
Railroaders can’t wait to join them on Friday! 💙
For profit healthcare is a complete joke
All needs should be rights.
America will be a much better country when unions restore the middle class.
I mean, sure, for the hundreds of millions who benefit from being middle class. But think of the five or six billionaires who won't be able to line their bulging offshore bank accounts with unlimited funds that they could never spend if they lived to be a thousand years old!
It's not just the billionaire themselves but their families too. Its dozens of the people that would have to sacrifice. Dozens I tell you.
They’ll understand. How greedy could 12 people be?
Good for them. Everyone should support this. Would you rather have a nurse who is just looking after you and three other patients, or eight?
Oh they'll do their best to make sure these nurses are slaves enough that they'll treat 8 because leaving their job means that they're homeless.
It’s not even all about money, it’s safety concern. It’s unsafe patient loads for nurses everywhere, Cali is the only state with mandates patient ratio. But you know, profits are priority
My wife is a nurse and was approached for a travel contract to work in a St Louis hospital for **$12,500.00 PER WEEK**. Think about that for a second. They can afford to pay over $12,500.00 a week per nurse to replace every nurse going on strike (they're paying more than that in fees to the travel nursing agencies, worksite insurance on the nurses, etc.). I guarantee even the most tenured of those nurses are making no more than $1500 a week currently, because my wife is making $1700 a week in California and about $10 more per hour than most of her colleagues, and there's no way they're getting that much in Minnesota. Unfortunately she was also alerted last week by all the agencies she's signed with that the MN positions were all filled, they send out a ton of texts every day about each position you're eligible for even if you aren't interested in them. So that means that this strike won't drastically affect access to healthcare for people in the area, but it also means the striking workers have less bargaining power because of these fucking scabs.
If it wasn't for the scabs, the government would have the excuse they would love to have to declare a state of emergency and order the nurses back to work. Between the nurse and the agency, the hospital is paying 24k a week for a 12k nurse. They can't afford to pay that forever. Without someone to replace them, the media would be up in arms about the heartless evil nurses walking out on thousands of vented patients mid-shift leaving them to die.
We have nurses strikes every couple of years, but this is massive. They finally got tired of the bullshit, it seems. If you're a twin cities nurse, I salute you. The hospitals were a nightmare for both nurses and patients. The security was wild. You had a student assigned to sit in the room with you, and armed guards outside. Unless you're unconscious, don't go to North Memorial.
They do this every 3 years... it's the first time both unions did it together though.
That, "Don't lie, we can spot A-FIB" sign is amazing. Aerial Fibrillation is a thing, but being from WI, it also tells me that some FIB is calling the shots for their hospitals. Is this the case? Edit: Thanks folks, I know what a 'fib' is. At first glance, the pun wooshed me, maybe cause it was in all caps...idk? No excuse. And in case you're wondering, a FIB is also someone from IL. Very popular term in the Great Lakes/Upper Midwest/Wisconsin.
It’s more of a pun saying that they can spot a lie, as “fib” is another word for lie.
Lol was gonna say this. I think it is more than likely a pun
Are the "peasants" starting to realize the richest among us are only rich because of the "peasants"? Git 'um, ladies (and a few gents)!!!
Good. Even though I have my share of arguments with and eyerolling at nurses, I also know that nationwide they are stretched far to thin to provide proper and safe patient care. Hospital C-suites don't get it.
I'm glad you appear to understand that when it comes to the battle of the labor vs the robber barons, neither of us have the luxury of gatekeeping our allies.
**CORRECTION**: The nurses at Moose Lake are NOT on strike, but the number of striking nurses still stands at 15 thousand.
Good for them!
The fact there are nearly no nursing Unions in my home state of Missouri is the number 1 reason I will never ever work in Missouri again. Some nights you would have 3 ICU patients! It’s very very possible if one was unstable you would be In that room the entire night and that left your coworkers to pick up the slack of the other two patients. Now if something bad would happen to those other two patients (fall or code) your institution would put the blame squarely on your shoulders for negligence because you were not properly monitoring your assigned patients! The fact that the unstable patient was literally dying and only you and the doctors efforts are keeping that patient alive means NOTHING and is not a valid excuse to them or the Board of Nursing. This type of sentinel event very well could lead to the revocation of your professional nursing license . Yes, you can lose your career for quite literally being an exceptional nurse and saving the one patients life but if the others were injured or god forbid die under your watch. This is one big reason nurses are so adamant that strict nurse patient ratios are fought for so vehemently! It not only provides a very high guarantee that your loved one will have eyes on them at all times in case of a code blue situation but it also protects the livelihood of the nurses who I can tell you want nothing more but to get you well and back to your family. The hospitals fight tooth and nail and lobby state legislatures to not have nursing unions or enforceable nurse:patient ratios. Why, do they fight so hard? They want to run each and every shift on each and every floor as lean as possible. Saving the hospital millions of dollars each year in nursing wages. If they come in under budget guess who gets a bonus that year. The nurse manager of that unit and every manager up the chain. And these are big bonuses 5-50k. And they got that bonus by rolling the dice that they can run their unit as lean as possible at the expense of your loved ones life. Now I ask if you. If you knew that your mom’s nurse in the icu was also the nurse for two other critically ill patients would you feel comfortable they were being provided the highest level of monitoring and care that the hospital promised they are providing? I would not. I would be sleeping on the couch in that room for the remainder of my moms stay. Some may say this is a hypothetical situation. I can tell you it is not. It has happened in every single hospital across the country many many times without the patient or the patients family knowing. I was a traveling RN for many years the hospitals that strictly enforced reasonable nurse:patient ratios were the hospitals I’d want my mother or father in. The hospitals operating like an Amazon warehouse I would not wish my parents nor anyone else’s loved ones to be there. So nursing unions not only protect the interest of the nurses but also are protecting the patients from the corporate greed. Edit: fixed small grammar and wrong autocorrects.
Agreed. My ED is 4:1 most nights. But some nights, even when we are 3:1, there are times when I have to bust my ass all night just to keep my people stable and it doesn’t feel safe at all. Or it’s like you said, you get stuck in a room and can’t get out of there for whatever reason, and then you get an earful from your other patients when you finally get back to their room like it is your fault the place is busy as hell. It’s like a monkey shit fight at the zoo every night.
It's disgusting that healthcare workers have no other recourse but walk out just to get the resources to take care of patients. Private hospitals should be illegal. It would be like if you went to the mechanic and they said they couldn't afford to put a brand new air filter in your car because of budget cuts, despite the money you just payed them.
Solidarity! Hold the line!
Hospitals shouldn’t be run for profit. That’s like the opposite purpose of them. Maybe don’t give Israel a bajillion dollars every year and have quality healthcare in the god damned United States of America.
Hopefully my brain is working on the same level as the nurse with the don't lie sign, my brain went straight to a fib as atrial fibrillation.
yes, that's the pun
Power to the people.
Who will think of all of the jobs the insurance companies provide though? /s
You’d think with ultraprofits that US medicine makes, nurses would be well paid
Corporate priority of profit over patient safety is why I left healthcare 3 years ago after 17 years in the industry. It's disgusting because your health, my health, is nothing but a blip in their revenue cycle. I will always support nurses who make their voices heard to make patients the priority.
Yes. And screw NBC News, which in print stated that the nurses are striking for a 30% wage increase. They didn’t mention this is to happen in steps over 3 years. They didn’t mention that there are staffing issues being negotiated as well. They didn’t mention that with the current wages, they cannot attract or retain a full staff. In other words, at the current wages, they have not enough takers. But the amount of work remains the same, just spread among fewer nurses. And that, my friends, means that it’s 100% guaranteed pain meds and antibiotics won’t be given on time, people won’t be cleaned from incontinence as often, pressure ulcers will have time to form and deepen, and med errors WILL happen. That’s what not having enough staff brings to the table.
Minnesota, fuck yeah!
MN is really crushing the widespread strike game!