A striking number of female health care workers in the United States earn less than $15 per hour, leaving 1.7 million of them and their families living in poverty, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH).
Researchers Katheryn Himmelstein and Atheendar Venkataramani found that this economic vulnerability had serious repercussions for the industry and recommended raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour as one solution.
Mandy Hartz, USW health care coordinator, and Mike Wright, director of the USW’s Health, Safety and Environment Department, offered another remedy to help health care workers: unionization.
In a response to the Himmelstein study, also published in the AJPH, Hartz and Wright explain that a collective bargaining agreement offers some of the best protections against the racial and gender disparities between health care workers and provides a means to stop the overall devaluation of health care work.
“Full-time union health care workers in community and social service occupations earn $221 more per week; personal care and service occupations earn $135 more per week; and health care practitioner and technical occupations earn $128 more per week than their non-union counterparts,” write Hartz and Wright.
“In addition, collective bargaining agreements go well beyond wage rates with provisions for retirement security, paid sick days, maternity leave, vacations, holidays, and rational promotion based on training, skill and seniority,” write Hartz and Wright. “Most importantly, union workers are more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance and to enjoy greater employer contributions towards that insurance.”
Unions also fight for safer working conditions, which is a particularly pressing concern for health care workers, who suffer one of the highest rates of nonfatal injury and illness of any occupation.
To read the original study “Economic Vulnerability Among U.S. Female Health Care Workers: Potential Impact of a $15-per-Hour Minimum Wage,” click here.
To read Hartz and Wright’s response “In Demand and Undervalued—The Plight of American Health Care Workers,” click here.