We can support health care workers through unions, collective action

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on workplace conditions for health care providers across North Carolina and the United States. Initially, there was abundant gratitude for nurses and doctors battling a new disease, but that gratitude seldom accompanied better working conditions to mitigate the issues.

Since then, health care workers have been vocal about the stress they’re under, often with little response from their employers or politicians. The side effects are palpable, with no clear solution in sight.

On Tuesday, the News & Observer reported that North Carolina’s state-run mental health hospitals had thousands of vacancies, forcing current staff to work overtime to make up the difference. The NC National Guard is sending soldiers and airmen to a hospital in Burlington to assist during COVID-19’s winter surge.

As with many of our COVID-related realizations, the stress put on health care employees isn’t necessarily new. “We’ve lost a lot of other talented staff members, and we just feel like we don’t have any voice in the decisions being made,” said Molly Chadbourne, a family nurse practitioner at the Carrboro Community Health Center, run by the non-profit Piedmont Health. Chadbourne says that in the three years she has worked at Piedmont, she has brought concerns to supervisors, only for them to disappear as they work through the company hierarchy. “We just really want a seat at the table,” she says — something that became especially important within the last two years.

Chadbourne and other Piedmont Health providers are part of Piedmont Providers United, an effort to unionize among their workplace and the others under the Piedmont umbrella. They filed their petition to unionize in November, and are in the midst of a month-long election to formalize their formation. They’ve received letters of support from Orange County’s elected officials, as well as Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the head of the Poor People’s Campaign.

“Let me be clear: this is a deeply moral issue,” Barber wrote in a letter to Piedmont CEO. “The diverse patient population who your providers serve—Black, brown, and white; native and newcomer—depend on their medical providers for critical services, and providers are coming together in order to improve those services.”

North Carolina does not allow collective bargaining from public sector employees, meaning the strategy taken by Piedmont Providers United wouldn’t necessarily work for the state employees of the mental health hospitals. While some are members of UE Local 150, a public sector employees union, their ability to work as a collective body is severely limited.

Still, there are some ways that their employers and the legislature could step up.

From the legislature, our government and its university systems could implement incentives like debt relief and higher pay for health care educators to ensure there are people who will teach the next generation. They could monitor workplace conditions at hospitals and doctor’s offices for labor rights violations, to ensure that employees aren’t getting burnt out from work they aren’t supposed to be doing or aren’t getting paid enough to do. With regard to COVID, this would also require legal recognition that the virus is a workplace hazard, something the courts have given mixed messages on.

Privately, it could be wise for health care companies to pay their employees more, create incentive programs for providers who continue working there over years, and services to help providers cope with burnout. More companies could have mechanisms in place to report patient harassment, which has been on the rise during the latter half of the pandemic. Some organizations, like Piedmont, already offer these procedures, but it’s important that these protocols are followed and that there is a definite resolution.

As for the public, the best things we can do is uplift the voices of health care workers so their needs are met. Above all, just be nice to them.

This story was originally published February 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "We can support health care workers through unions, collective action."