re: Nurses at University Medical Center vote to unionize, a Louisiana first

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Hospital admin and BOD make too much and underpay everyone below them.

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Wife, no pics, worked at UMC during covid and was in one of the first covid units there. What they were asked to do with what they had was downright ridiculous bordering on illegal. Prior to that and after covid, it was always patient to nurse ratio. She typically worked in a trauma unit being asked to carry 6+ patients at a time. That was the complaint I heard the most.

Pay is obviously a concern for everyone, but to see them constantly bring in travel nurses making 4 times the local staff while trying everything they can to keep the local nurses from making more just makes no sense.

Fast forward to today, she now works in Slidell. Traveling that 30 miles across the lake cost her $10k+ a year. Seems to me market should be the same or at the very least pretty similar given that small range, but this has been a known issue for sometime from what we've heard from others.

UMC is just the tipping point. I wouldn't be surprised to see more local hospitals going union in the near future. The Oschners of the world are ruining healthcare. They don't do anything well but continue to expand to monopolize the local industry and are just giving these nurses more and more reason with their poor management, policies, and pay.

How do people here think hospitals are paid to just turn ? Hospitals can't call insurers and tell them that they need to start paying more now. Rates are contracted and generally not going to change until the next contract negotiation. Medicare is setting its rates that you can't negotiate. And Medicaid is also not negotiable and in Louisiana is particularly horrible because the state just doesn't prioritize healthcare.

So the top is pretty squeezed and dependent on finding which codes reimburse the most and trying to target providers and cases in those areas. Add training programs that can't pump out enough graduates (for different reasons). Now take the generally limited revenue and figure out how to disperse funds to a group where no one believes they are paid enough and everyone always has one foot out the door with an eye open to better opportunities.

Money is the only thing that fixes problems and even then it's only temporary until more is demanded. The first way to get more money is to wait for private managed care contracts to be negotiated (which eventually burns employers and employees paying more and more), and while waiting for that salary costs continue increasing and the quickest way to keep everything afloat is cut costs (burns hospital employees and patients). And a lot of the fat that could be cut either isn't cut (like admins) or can't be cut (like pay cuts for high salaried physicians and other actual providers). But good luck telling admins to cut their peers or telling physicians and everyone else "we need to pay you less."

So because the system won't be fixed at the bottom (providers) the only realistic way is overhaul from payment systems through administration.

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independent, educated and successful

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Let's not get carried away on the educated and successful end.

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Why dont nurses just become CEOs?

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Some do.

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Starting pay was $31 an hour with a 5-10k bonus for some new grads 2-3 years ago.


In comparison, Lululemon shift managers make $29 an hour.

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This right here is the issue with the increase in "minium wage" they're pushing for

Why would a nurse take on all the responsibility and stress after spending $26k on a degree to make what an un-educated "manager" is at a local Subway with equal benefits.

And the hospitals that are moaning and groaning about raises are usually classified as "non-profits" so the money they're trying to save from foregoing raises are just pissed in the wind thru nonsense "donations". Like OLOL is donating $245m to LSU over the next few years but can't increase the pay of a RN because they want record profits for their board members to base their raises off of before donating the surplus

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Starting pay was $31 an hour with a 5-10k bonus for some new grads 2-3 years ago.

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How many hours do RNs typically work since I assume it isn’t the usual 8-5 40 hour week

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They have been terrified for years but did absolutely nothing to help themselves

Every hospital in Louisiana’s plan of action for the nursing situation has been to put a bandaid over a shotgun wound

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It doesn’t help that they laid off a bunch of people recently. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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Join away, friend. You'll be tied to the least competent among you, and rewarded as such.

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Actually it should read: “You’ll be tied to the least competent among you, and rewarded as much as the most competent.”

And THAT realllly pisses off owners.

With a Union, Owners can’t get away with generally keeping workers insulated and ignorant as to each others pay, therefore often able to Low-ball/underpay as many employees as possible.

Collective bargaining takes that away from them.

Edit: I do have a bone to pick with how difficult it can be to remediate poor work/laziness, and would like a better balance.