A right to strike?

Framing Unions and Nurses

Union communication and framing are important for how union members, as well as how unions as organizations, are represented. In the context of declining union density and therefore fewer direct union members, unions' daily communication material on social media may be one of the most common interactions people have with unions. This case study focuses on United Nurses of Alberta, the union for most registered nurses in Alberta, Canada, where unionization rates are among the lowest in Canada. This case study shows how United Nurses of Alberta uses two collective action frames, nurses-as-distinct and nurses-as-advocates, in their daily communication to members and the public. In creating and promoting these frames, United Nurses of Alberta draws from and pushes against the industrial relations framework under which they operate and the historical narrative of nurses as caring and self-sacrificing, which may reinforce common understandings of nursing and also limit United Nurses of Alberta's ability to represent their members.

'Enough is enough': a mixed methods study on the key factors driving UK NHS nurses' decision to strike

BACKGROUND

The UK National Health Service (NHS) is one of the largest employers in the world and employs around 360,000 registered nurses. Following a protracted pay dispute in December 2022 NHS nurses engaged in industrial action resulting in the largest nurse strikes in the 74-year history of the NHS. Initially it appeared these strikes were a direct consequence of pay disputes but evidence suggests that the situation was more complex. This study aimed to explore what the key factors were in driving UK NHS nurses' decision to strike.

METHODS

A convergent parallel mixed methods design was used. The study was conducted throughout the UK and involved participants who were nurses working for the NHS who voted in favour of strike action. Data collection involved the use of an online survey completed by 468 nurses and 13 semi-structured interviews. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for quantitative data analysis and a process of inductive thematic analysis for the qualitative data. The quantitative and qualitative data were analysed separately and then integrated to generate mixed methods inferences.

RESULTS

The quantitative findings showed that patient safety, followed by staff shortages, pay, and unmanageable work demands were the most important factors encouraging nurses' decision to strike. The qualitative findings served to further the understanding of these factors particularly in relation to participants' perception of the NHS and the consequences of inadequate pay and staff shortages. Three overarching and overlapping themes represented the qualitative findings: Save our NHS, Money talks, and It's untenable. Integration of the findings showed a high level of concordance between the two data sets and suggest that the factors involved are interconnected and inextricably linked.

CONCLUSIONS

The UK NHS is a challenging and demanding work environment in which the well-being of its patients is dependent on the well-being of those who care for them. Concerns relating to patient welfare, the nursing profession and the NHS played a large part in driving UK NHS nurses' decision to strike. In order to address these concerns a focus on recruitment and retention of nurses in the NHS is needed.

Psychiatry's 'Others'? Rethinking the Professional Self-Fashioning of British Mental Nurses c. 1900-20

Despite facing manifold social and educational barriers, British asylum nurses across the long nineteenth century articulated distinctive professional identities as a means of leveraging their position in the medical hierarchy. This article draws upon a corpus of previously unattributed contributions to the Asylum News (1897-1919) - one of the first journals produced for the edification of asylum workers - to illustrate the diversity of medical personae developed and disseminated by these employees in the Edwardian era. Through scientific and creative works, nurses engaged with the pressing social and medical debates of the day, in the process exposing a heterogeneous intellectual culture. Moreover, as their writings attest, for some ambitious nurses these pretensions to intellectual authority prompted claims for medical autonomy, driving agitation on the hospital wards. The article thus strengthens claims for the 'cultural agency' of asylum workers and offers new insights into the cultural antecedents of professionalisation and trade unionism.

Improving work conditions through strike: Examination of nurses' attitudes through perceptions of two physician strikes in Israel

BACKGROUND

Strikes are means to influence policies related to working conditions, yet raise ethical dilemmas for healthcare workers. Nurse strikes have become more prominent around the world.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the change in Israeli nurses' attitudes towards strikes in light of two physician strikes that have preceded a nursing strike.

METHODS

An anonymous survey was administered once in 2000 (N = 106) and again in 2011 (n = 175) following 110 days of a physician strike, to assess nurses' attitudes towards the strike and resulting ethical issues.

RESULTS

A statistically significant change (p < 0.05) between administrations revealed that in 2011 more nurses identified striking as a legitimate mechanism, would strike under the same circumstances, and felt that collaboration with physicians persisted despite the strike. Additionally, an increasing number of nurses said that the suffering of patients due to the strike is somewhat or entirely justified, although they were faced with a difficult dilemma of loyalty to physician colleagues vs.

PATIENTS

Nurses reported finding ways to mitigate the suffering of patients resulting from the strike.

CONCLUSIONS

While patient-centered care remains nurses' first and foremost priority, findings indicate an increasing support of collective bargaining and strike to promote working conditions related to professional and public health agendas.

Nurses, industrial action and ethics: considerations from the 2010 South African public-sector strike

Several important ethical dilemmas emerge when nurses join a public-sector strike. Such industrial action is commonplace in South Africa and was most notably illustrated by a national wage negotiation in 2010. Media coverage of the proceedings suggested unethical behaviour on the part of nurses, and further exploration is merited. Laws, policies and provisional codes are meant to guide nurses' behaviour during industrial action, while ethical theories can be used to further illuminate the role of nurses in industrial action. There are, however, important aspects to consider before judging whether nurses act unethically when striking. Following Loewy's suggestion that the nature of the work, the proceeding commitment of the nurse to the patient, the prevailing situation when the strike is planned and the person(s) who stand(s) to benefit from the strike be considered, coupled with a consideration of the South African historical socio-political context, important aspects of the ethics of nurses' behaviour in industrial action transpire.

Nurses’ perceptions of their professional rights

The purpose of this study, which is part of a wider study of professional ethics, was to describe nurses’ perceptions of their rights in Italy. The data were collected by open-ended focus group interviews and analyzed with inductive content analysis. Based on the analysis, three main themes were identified. The first theme “Unfamiliarity with rights” described nurses’ perception that their rights mirrored historical roots, educational content, and nurses’ and patients’ position in the society. The second theme, “Rights reflected in legislation” highlighted that working and professional Italian legislation played a strong role. The third theme, “Managerial barriers for nurses’ rights” underlined the nurses’ perceptions that nursing management had the responsibility to create the conditions where nurses’ rights could flourish. This study intends to contribute to the debate on this underexplored topic.

Nursing strikes: An ethical perspective on the US healthcare community

Recent labor disputes between registered nurses and hospitals in Minnesota, California, and Pennsylvania raise moral questions about nurses’ professional obligations, nurses’ right to collectively bargain to preserve or improve wages, benefits, and working conditions, and patients’ right to medical care. Deontology and consequentialism focus too narrowly on nurses and patients, and thus ignore the nature of the healthcare community as a system of competing interests. When considered in this context, nurses’ strikes are shown to be consistent with this system of competing interests, and thus are morally permissible.

An analysis of how The Irish Times portrayed Irish nursing during the 1999 strike

The aim of this article is to explore the images of nursing that were presented in the media during the recent industrial action by nurses and midwives in the Republic of Ireland. Although both nurses and midwives took industrial strike action, the strike was referred to as 'the nurses' strike' and both nurses and midwives were generally referred to by the generic term 'nurses'. Data were gathered from the printed news media of The Irish Times over a period of one month--4 October to 4 November 1999--which included the nine days of the strike. Although we limited the source of our data to just one newspaper, the findings do provide an image of how nurses and nursing care are viewed by both health professionals and the public. This image appeared to give a higher value to masculine cultural codes and the performance of technical skills, whereas acts associated with feminine cultural codes of caring were considered of lower value.