Strikes: Past, Present and Futures

The demand for healthcare workers has surged across all professions within the industry, including long-term care, over the past 30 years. In spite of their widely recognised social importance, healthcare workers often face exploitative situations and poor working conditions. Further, much of the new demand has been filled through migrant workers, especially in the OECD countries. The reasons for this include factors such as aging populations, decrease in health funding, transnational labour agreements, privatisation and deregulation. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the impact of these factors, due to the sudden stress on healthcare systems worldwide.

Trade unions can play a pivotal role in addressing this issue by engaging and organizing healthcare workers. This is a challenging process given the labour processes, scheduling and overall stress these workers experience. There are also language and cultural barriers, in addition to fears over unemployment and immigration status for migrant workers. It is fundamental that healthcare unions can engage with migrant workers in the workplace to build solidarity with native born workers to demand better protection, conditions and wages. As the share of migrant workers increases with projected demand, this will become part of a crucial strategy for trade unions to increase their bargaining power. Our proposal is for a panel discussion on how healthcare unions can organize and recruit migrant workers. We hope to compare different strategies, followed by a discussion.

Potential Speakers:

Jennifer Nazareno (Assistant Professor, Brown University)

Catherine Ceniza Choy (Professor, UC Berkeley)

Jennifer Chun (Associate Professor, UCLA)