People have had lots of thoughts flying around as of late relating to the current downturn of the U.S. economy, and now the world economy as well. Although I keep hearing from folks that it is a good thing that I am in nursing, we know economic downturns as well as others. Harry Truman once said “It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.” Some of us lose our jobs quickly, for some it happens gradually over time. We are all beginning to feel the pinch, and I am not convinced that nursing is a recession proof profession.
This is a capitalist society (I'm not knocking it), so no career is recession proof! Nurses have been laid off in mass numbers in the past. I graduated in 1993, and had been promised a job at our local hospital a year before graduation. Six months before graduation, they cut forty registered nurse positions. The new proposal? I would work 40%, and be the first to accept low census days. For anyone unfamiliar with this, it means you are scheduled to work, but if there are not enough patients you just simply don’t work and don’t get paid. And what is the bargain for the employer? Pay new grads significantly less than those with experience and get rid of the need to pay benefits by hiring part-time.
I am not suggesting that we would be jobless in significant numbers. There are still a lot of positions available. In the past, when the economy is tight we just never get around to filling those openings. They often pay less. We work short with people who are not as experienced. In the early nineties, cleaning ladies were told that if we needed help, they were to assist as told.
Wages are not competitive. Already, our contract has expired and we cannot get things moving with it. The wage portion has already been agreed on; it won’t scratch the surface of increased commuting and heating costs. Our stick point is that they would like us to pay for our health insurance. Not all at once, but for them to have the ability to increase it annually to what ever they felt they needed.
If you have never had to pay for decent health insurance, I strongly encourage you to climb out from under your rock and look at the price. The average cost of health insurance to the employer is more than 10,000 per year. Our family lives where we do because I couldn’t get health insurance as a self-employed RN. We paid for a crappy policy that covered my husband and the girls for serious stuff. I was uninsured for five years. Health insurance was denied to me by everyone we applied to. We had COBRA for nine months for six hundred per month. That was the price ten years ago.
Nursing is not easy work. You get the blue-collar physical work with the white-collar work with your head. We burn people out. We are frequently not very nice to each other. We take heat for other people’s stress; both the sick and other professionals. It would be nice some days to just mindlessly solder parts of a cell phone together. If something is wrong, it can be fixed. Nobody has to die over it. There are 600,000 nurses not currently working in their profession in this country. When the economy is tight, they reenter the nursing work force, and make the job market tighter for the rest of us. In addition, a number of foreign nurses will continue to be hired and American nursing schools will continue to crank out more New Graduate Nurses then the hospitals can handle. A combination of both a recession and the current trend will devastate nursing wages and opportunities for employment. I think the optimism shared by most people regarding nursing is based on fantasy. Everyone thinks he/she is needed. There is a shortage, right? Besides employers have no choices. Won't they pay lots of money for us to sign on to work? These ideas are CRAZY! They have to heat the hospital and pay increased costs for supplies just like the rest of us. And when we don’t have insurance and they still provide care, guess what? The hospital loses money…money that will eventually come out of your pocket and mine. Our baby boomers are retiring. They go to Medicare for insurance, and then the rest of us have to support that bill. We are back to the same question that comes up time and time again, is healthcare a right or commodity. When money is tight, we call it commodity. When we are in an economic boom, it is a right. Hospitals can only provide care with out reimbursement just so long. If you are a nurse my advice to you is to be realistic and watch your back. Gather up all your acorns and nuts and store them for the winter. There is a downward trend in wages over the horizon!
This is a capitalist society (I'm not knocking it), so no career is recession proof! Nurses have been laid off in mass numbers in the past. I graduated in 1993, and had been promised a job at our local hospital a year before graduation. Six months before graduation, they cut forty registered nurse positions. The new proposal? I would work 40%, and be the first to accept low census days. For anyone unfamiliar with this, it means you are scheduled to work, but if there are not enough patients you just simply don’t work and don’t get paid. And what is the bargain for the employer? Pay new grads significantly less than those with experience and get rid of the need to pay benefits by hiring part-time.
I am not suggesting that we would be jobless in significant numbers. There are still a lot of positions available. In the past, when the economy is tight we just never get around to filling those openings. They often pay less. We work short with people who are not as experienced. In the early nineties, cleaning ladies were told that if we needed help, they were to assist as told.
Wages are not competitive. Already, our contract has expired and we cannot get things moving with it. The wage portion has already been agreed on; it won’t scratch the surface of increased commuting and heating costs. Our stick point is that they would like us to pay for our health insurance. Not all at once, but for them to have the ability to increase it annually to what ever they felt they needed.
If you have never had to pay for decent health insurance, I strongly encourage you to climb out from under your rock and look at the price. The average cost of health insurance to the employer is more than 10,000 per year. Our family lives where we do because I couldn’t get health insurance as a self-employed RN. We paid for a crappy policy that covered my husband and the girls for serious stuff. I was uninsured for five years. Health insurance was denied to me by everyone we applied to. We had COBRA for nine months for six hundred per month. That was the price ten years ago.
Nursing is not easy work. You get the blue-collar physical work with the white-collar work with your head. We burn people out. We are frequently not very nice to each other. We take heat for other people’s stress; both the sick and other professionals. It would be nice some days to just mindlessly solder parts of a cell phone together. If something is wrong, it can be fixed. Nobody has to die over it. There are 600,000 nurses not currently working in their profession in this country. When the economy is tight, they reenter the nursing work force, and make the job market tighter for the rest of us. In addition, a number of foreign nurses will continue to be hired and American nursing schools will continue to crank out more New Graduate Nurses then the hospitals can handle. A combination of both a recession and the current trend will devastate nursing wages and opportunities for employment. I think the optimism shared by most people regarding nursing is based on fantasy. Everyone thinks he/she is needed. There is a shortage, right? Besides employers have no choices. Won't they pay lots of money for us to sign on to work? These ideas are CRAZY! They have to heat the hospital and pay increased costs for supplies just like the rest of us. And when we don’t have insurance and they still provide care, guess what? The hospital loses money…money that will eventually come out of your pocket and mine. Our baby boomers are retiring. They go to Medicare for insurance, and then the rest of us have to support that bill. We are back to the same question that comes up time and time again, is healthcare a right or commodity. When money is tight, we call it commodity. When we are in an economic boom, it is a right. Hospitals can only provide care with out reimbursement just so long. If you are a nurse my advice to you is to be realistic and watch your back. Gather up all your acorns and nuts and store them for the winter. There is a downward trend in wages over the horizon!
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