I’m against this policy because the entire concept of sympathy strikes is bullshit. If you go on strike, you don’t work. That’s what a strike is.
Basically everywhere in the world except Sweden, it’s super illegal to keep working but just screw over a single company when you work for some other company like a postal service.
Imagine if Postnord’s union workers decided that they didn’t like something about the biggest hospital company in Sweden, and “sympathy striked” to prevent their medicine from being delivered. Would you be OK with that?
In most of the world there is a law that striking cannot remove life critical care, and it is standard for hospital strikes to keep a skeleton crew for critical patient care while refusing to do any elective or non urgent care and all admin duties.
So no, not delivering medicine to a hospital would not be OK.
Not delivering other items would.
And it would only become a factor in sympathy strikes if the hospital was already on strike…
Well to be fair, I mentioned orphans and medicine, but only so much to say that people getting high end cars is not something that I think labor has any moral obligation to provide by comparison. And as I explained probably in too much length in my reply to them, even in healthcare labor there are limits to what labor can reasonably be asked, and beyond which not working is equally acceptable, because none of that industry even approaches a free market mechanism anywhere from any angle.
Imagine if Postnord’s union workers decided that they didn’t like something about the biggest hospital company in Sweden, and “sympathy striked” to prevent their medicine from being delivered. Would you be OK with that?
That doesn’t make sense. For it to be a sympathy strike, the workers at the hospital would have to be striking first. If the workers at the hospital are on strike, then the hospital has bigger issues than PostNord.
That’s my point. What if a minority of the workers at the hospital were striking. Say, the x-ray technicians. Would you be OK with PostNord not delivering essential materials to the hospital because the x-ray techs are striking?
In essentially no country is there really a free market of hospitals. They are pretty much always built at the discretion of what we might term “benevolent” government sponsored cartels, to ensure that there isn’t overlap, because nowhere can support the expense of multiple competing hospitals, much like utilities even when they are private. So the part of “free market” where workers can shop around their labor doesn’t exist in most of healthcare, if they bargain it will always be against a de facto sole provider of the service in any area. So what you have is a one way street in labor disputes. Management can do essentially anything hostile to labor so long as it doesn’t go so far as bringing the public in and then the government. This means they can pay ridiculously bad wages, they can even force workers to provide terrible service, and the laborers have no recourse beyond striking in many places.
Which brings us full circle to where we started, because the public in sane countries like Sweden has long ago realized that striking is really not a good thing in critical industries. It is the sort of thing you want to avoid at all costs, so it is essential that companies in such critical industries do not try to play chicken with labor over things, instead they have a very reasonable system companies and labor work together practically by default.
Am I in sympathy with striking nurses, or other healthcare providers, even if them striking means patients suffer? Yes, entirely, because I know that these people care deeply about patients, it is invariably always difficult way too low paid work, and I have never seen an instance where they took any action like this except when the situation was forced by the actions of the company.
I’m against this policy because the entire concept of sympathy strikes is bullshit. If you go on strike, you don’t work. That’s what a strike is.
Basically everywhere in the world except Sweden, it’s super illegal to keep working but just screw over a single company when you work for some other company like a postal service.
Imagine if Postnord’s union workers decided that they didn’t like something about the biggest hospital company in Sweden, and “sympathy striked” to prevent their medicine from being delivered. Would you be OK with that?
In most of the world there is a law that striking cannot remove life critical care, and it is standard for hospital strikes to keep a skeleton crew for critical patient care while refusing to do any elective or non urgent care and all admin duties.
So no, not delivering medicine to a hospital would not be OK.
Not delivering other items would.
And it would only become a factor in sympathy strikes if the hospital was already on strike…
Isn’t medication delivered by other means than the post office? Also a bit of a bad straw man you are setting up there…
“I don’t like sympathy strikes… Won’t someone please think of the hospitals in this very unlikely but emotionally appealing scenario…”
Is basically what you did. It’s straight from the fox news propaganda playbook
Well to be fair, I mentioned orphans and medicine, but only so much to say that people getting high end cars is not something that I think labor has any moral obligation to provide by comparison. And as I explained probably in too much length in my reply to them, even in healthcare labor there are limits to what labor can reasonably be asked, and beyond which not working is equally acceptable, because none of that industry even approaches a free market mechanism anywhere from any angle.
That doesn’t make sense. For it to be a sympathy strike, the workers at the hospital would have to be striking first. If the workers at the hospital are on strike, then the hospital has bigger issues than PostNord.
That’s my point. What if a minority of the workers at the hospital were striking. Say, the x-ray technicians. Would you be OK with PostNord not delivering essential materials to the hospital because the x-ray techs are striking?
In essentially no country is there really a free market of hospitals. They are pretty much always built at the discretion of what we might term “benevolent” government sponsored cartels, to ensure that there isn’t overlap, because nowhere can support the expense of multiple competing hospitals, much like utilities even when they are private. So the part of “free market” where workers can shop around their labor doesn’t exist in most of healthcare, if they bargain it will always be against a de facto sole provider of the service in any area. So what you have is a one way street in labor disputes. Management can do essentially anything hostile to labor so long as it doesn’t go so far as bringing the public in and then the government. This means they can pay ridiculously bad wages, they can even force workers to provide terrible service, and the laborers have no recourse beyond striking in many places.
Which brings us full circle to where we started, because the public in sane countries like Sweden has long ago realized that striking is really not a good thing in critical industries. It is the sort of thing you want to avoid at all costs, so it is essential that companies in such critical industries do not try to play chicken with labor over things, instead they have a very reasonable system companies and labor work together practically by default.
Am I in sympathy with striking nurses, or other healthcare providers, even if them striking means patients suffer? Yes, entirely, because I know that these people care deeply about patients, it is invariably always difficult way too low paid work, and I have never seen an instance where they took any action like this except when the situation was forced by the actions of the company.