Pajaro Valley Unified School District 2008-09 fiscal year salar...

[foghorn]

Unions are not the sole cause as you are well aware but play a major role in the cost of hospital care which is what nurses primarily do.
My agrument is not one sided. Businesses are required by law to negotiate with unions and cannot opt out. If businesses were given the option, including the hospitals, they would dump the unions overnight.
As a union memeber have you not seen incompetence in a nurse but could do nothing to have them removed?. How about someone who even steals or is doing drugs. the union will fight for them and the management can do nothing.

[Bunny]

foghorn wrote:

Unions are not the sole cause as you are well aware but play a major role in the cost of hospital care which is what nurses primarily do.
My agrument is not one sided. Businesses are required by law to negotiate with unions and cannot opt out. If businesses were given the option, including the hospitals, they would dump the unions overnight.
As a union memeber have you not seen incompetence in a nurse but could do nothing to have them removed?. How about someone who even steals or is doing drugs. the union will fight for them and the management can do nothing.

Again, I'm confused. I thought this discussion was about health care costs not human resource issues??? Of course unions are going to defend their members, that's what they're paid to do. And you are wrong about business owners, they can refuse to sign a contract and hire non-union replacement workers. I am not a union member but I have seen sole proprietors of small business' doing drugs and drinking at work and they are management!! And let me tell you that there may be some questionable tax deductions on some business owners tax returns. Unless you can tell me that these kinds of things are only being done by union members it again appears that your are singling out just unions.

[foghorn]

Bunny you are talking in circles. Unions are responsible for driving up the costs of healthcare. Unions ask for more benefits and pay each time there is a contract renewal regardless of the economic state of the business. Offshore was created to counter the escalating costs of business because of unions. Boeing just moved the new facility to North Carolina for this reason.
You are not accurate. Business is required by law to negotiate with the union. Temporary workers can be deployed only for temporary reprieve to keep a business running. Unions will strike and shut down a business if they do not agree with what is being offered. Businesses cannot fire or even reprimand poor performance on the job without union approval.
Read the laws regarding unions.
I stand by the statement they are corrupt, un-necessary with todays employment laws and OSHA and are wasting the memebers dollars.

[Bunny]

foghorn wrote:

Bunny you are talking in circles. Unions are responsible for driving up the costs of healthcare. Unions ask for more benefits and pay each time there is a contract renewal regardless of the economic state of the business. Offshore was created to counter the escalating costs of business because of unions. Boeing just moved the new facility to North Carolina for this reason.
You are not accurate. Business is required by law to negotiate with the union. Temporary workers can be deployed only for temporary reprieve to keep a business running. Unions will strike and shut down a business if they do not agree with what is being offered. Businesses cannot fire or even reprimand poor performance on the job without union approval.
Read the laws regarding unions.
I stand by the statement they are corrupt, un-necessary with todays employment laws and OSHA and are wasting the memebers dollars.

Again, you are wrong about union contracts. Business owners have to negotiate but don't have to agree to a contract. And you are wrong when you don't include doctors and insurance company stockholders as part of the increase in the cost of insurance. You refuse to see the facts because you just want to blame one group and only one group.

Why unions in the first place? A simple answer is that without them some business owners would take advantage of the workers. Just look at today's news article about the blueberry farmers in Michigan, I mean a 6 year old picking berries!! Even you should condemn that practice. And as far as the laws go, they only work if someone is CAUGHT breaking them. Unions PREVENT those kinds of things. I know I will not change your mind about this but you won't change others minds if you don't consider other factors that increase health care and just bash unions.

[OhReally]

Who keeps thinking that most nurses make vast sums of money? This is just not true, even in California. Yes, there are some RN's who do make over 100K. But most do NOT. This has been shown in many studies. Unfortunately, web sites like the US dept of Labor quote hourly rates that may be correct, but ANNUAL rates of pay that are NOT, because they are based on a 40 hr work week, with most RN's do not work. The fine print at the bottom of the USDept of Labor plainly states the assumptions. One of the latest very sophisticated studies recently done in California documents that RN's generally work a bit over 30 hrs per week.

The wage scale of an RN is very broad. The pay for school nurse, for skilled nursing facility, for jail, for summer camp, for hospital, for clinic, etc. are all quite varied. Within the most complex setting, the hospital, especially a large teaching system like UCSF, Stanford, etc the categories of "nursing" are very broad, with many different nursing roles and pay scales to match. Many nurses are in research, private industry, academia, government, etc. It is not just hospital based bedside nursing where earnings are being made.

The pay scale for a hospital based, union contracted RN is not flat. It is dependent on the type of nursing being done, skill level, and years of service. Entry pay locally for the hospitals is roughly 40-45 dollars/hr, hardly a grand amount, even if working full time.

Nurses who are making "large" amounts of money, over 100K, are in the MINORITY. Most hospital based RN's work part time (less than 40 hrs) and are your basic clinical/bedside RN, not in a specialized track with advanced licenses, degrees, or certifications. An RN such as this, say one with about 4-6 years of experience, is making roughly 70K per year. If you are earning in the six digits, you are working fulltime/overtime, with many years under your belt, perhaps higher up on a clinical "ladder", with specialty training, etc etc. Many RN's in the hospital are making yearly wages of under 60K.

I have read many wage studies: with regards to comparisons, say, to engineering, it has been shown that initially, right out of college, an engineer (broadly speaking) in the NON-computer/software world, i.e.
we are talking about old school/real world engineers here,,,, will make LESS than a new grad RN. However, over time, the engineer steadily increases the salary and easily surpasses the RN salary, as do many other professions.

It seems a fool's errand to attempt to compare the "worth" of one profession and its pay over another. However, it is definitely not accurate to characterize RN salaries as consistently over six figures.

Additionally, where is the logic in linking "gratitude" in pay with the current economic climate? Many professions are linked to certain economic cycles or economic components, for better or worse, through rise and fall. Currently, the mortgage industry is hard hit and thousands of brokers are on unemployment. Ok. Several years ago, they were raking in obscene salaries. Nursing salaries at the time were, well, just a bit less than what they are currently. While dot com and high tech folks were drowning in option money and showing up at open houses with suitcases filled with cash, RN's were puhtzing along with other, more mundane salary earners. This is the nature of the health field.....not real low, and not real high.

There is no need for any nurse to be "grateful" or apologetic for any salary they earn. Like any other job, the wage and benefits are what's negotiated, plain and simple--you know, like in all those male dominated professions, like the law, consulting, finance, contracting, business, etc etc

[slightly salty]

i'd sure hate to be stuck in the hospital during a nurses' strike... i thought there were some professions that weren't allowed to strike because of the danger to public safety; i guess nurses aren't one of 'em. but who would fill in?

[CNA RN 2]

OhReally wrote:

It seems a fool's errand to attempt to compare the "worth" of one profession and its pay over another.

Agreed.

[CNA RN 2]

foghorn wrote:

Being compensated for their skills is not the issue. Being compensated regardless of quality of the work is. Whether you perform at a high level or perform poorly the compensation is the same.

Agreed.