Institutional Legacies, Union Power, and Organizational Restructuring in Healthcare

by John Kallas, Rosemary Batt and Eileen Appelbaum

A central problem in contemporary employment relations has been the fragmentation of work and dismantling of internal employment systems that historically provided stable jobs and income security. This process is occurring in hospital systems as they attempt to cut costs and improve care quality by shifting services out of costly hospitals and into a wide range of outpatient centers. While these strategies may benefit patients, the implications for workers and their unions are worrisome as decentralization leads to the unravelling of internal employment systems and the potential creation of two-tiered or segmented labor markets across different locations in the same city.

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COMMENTARY

Gender Wage Gaps in Health Care Occupations

by Eileen Appelbaum

A presentation by Dr. Eileen Appelbaum to the Industry Studies Association in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 31, 2019. A copy of the report is available upon request.

Rapid Job Growth, More Education Fail to Translate into Higher Wages for Health Care Workers

by Eileen Appelbaum

Health care, an important source of jobs in the US economy, accounts for nearly 13 percent of private sector employment. Unfortunately, despite rapid job growth in the sector, we’ve also seen wages of many healthcare workers in this critical area of our economy stagnate.

Demographic Trends in Healthcare Have Led to a More Diverse Workforce

by Eileen Appelbaum

Employment trends in hospitals and outpatient settings are consistent with the strategies of organizational restructuring that hospitals have undertaken. Hospitals continue to hire the largest share of workers, with employment rising from 5.25 million jobs in 2005 to 5.75 million in 2015 — a growth rate of almost 10 percent.

Workers Were Older and More Highly Educated in 2015 than in 2005; Wages Were Stagnant or Fell

by Eileen Appelbaum

Jobs in the two largest nonprofessional occupation groups ― medical technicians and health aides and assistants ― grew 17.2 percent and 20.0 percent respectively, and in 2015 the number of workers in these jobs reached 5.5 million.

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