Dr. John Wust does not come off as a labor agitator. A longtime obstetrician-gynecologist from Louisiana with a penchant for bow ties, Dr. Wust spent the first 15 years of his career as a partner in a small business — that is, running his own practice with colleagues.
约翰·伍斯特医生看上去并不是那种会鼓动劳工进行抗议的人。他是来自路易斯安那州的资深妇产科医生,平时喜欢打领结,他刚开始从医的15年里是一家小企业的合伙人,当时他和同事一起经营自己的诊所。
Long after he took a position at Allina Health, a large nonprofit health care system based in Minnesota, in 2009, he did not see himself as the kind of employee who might benefit from collective bargaining.
2009年,他在明尼苏达州的一家大型非营利性医疗保健机构雅林娜医疗入职,在此之后的很长一段时间,他都不认为自己是那种可能会从集体谈判中受益的员工。
But that changed in the months leading up to March, when his group of more than 100 doctors at an Allina hospital near Minneapolis voted to unionize.
但这种情况在今年3月份之前的几个月里发生了变化,明尼阿波利斯附近的一家雅林娜医院的100多名医生投票支持成立工会。
Dr. Wust, who has spoken with colleagues about the potential benefits of a union, said doctors were at a loss on how to ease their unsustainable workload because they had less input at the hospital than ever before.
伍斯特医生曾与同事们讨论过工会的潜在好处,他说,医生们不知道要如何减轻不可持续的工作量,因为医院投入的资源比之前任何时候都更少。
At the time he and his colleagues voted to unionize, they were one of the largest groups of private-sector doctors ever to do so. But by October, that distinction went to a group that included about 400 primary-care physicians employed in clinics that are also owned by Allina.
当伍斯特医生和同事们投票成立工会时,他们是有史以来规模最大的成立工会的私营部门医生群体之一。但到了10月份,这一称号被另一个群体拿走了,这个群体有约400名全科医生,他们也受雇于雅林娜旗下的诊所。
The union that represents them, the Doctors Council of the Service Employees International Union, says doctors from dozens of facilities around the country have inquired about organizing over the past few years.
代表这些医生的工会是“服务业雇员国际联盟医生委员会”,该组织表示,在过去几年里,来自全国各地数十家机构的医生询问了组织工会的事宜。
And doctors are not the only health professionals who are unionizing or protesting in greater numbers. Health care workers, many of them nurses, held eight major work stoppages last year — the most in a decade — and are on pace to match or exceed that number this year.
而且,集体参加工会或进行抗议活动的医疗保健职业人士并非只有医生。医护人员(其中许多是护士)在去年进行了八次大规模停工,这是十年来次数最多的一年,而且今年有望赶上或超过这个数字。
This fall, dozens of nonunion pharmacists at CVS and Walgreens stores called in sick or walked off the job to protest understaffing, many for a full day or more.
今年秋天,CVS药局和沃尔格林药店的数十名非工会药剂师打电话请病假或罢工,以抗议人手不足,其中许多人的罢工时间持续了一整天或更长时间。
The reasons for the recent labor actions appear straightforward. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists said they were being asked to do more as staffing dwindles, leading to exhaustion and anxiety about putting patients at risk.
最近发生劳工行动的原因看起来很简单。医生、护士和药剂师表示,随着人员减少,他们被要求做更多工作,这导致他们精疲力竭,并担心会将患者置于危险中。
Many said that they were stretched to the limit after the pandemic began, and that their work demands never fully subsided.
许多人说,疫情开始后,他们的工作量达到了极限,而工作需求从未完全降下来。
But in each case, the explanation runs deeper: A longer-term consolidation of health care companies has left workers feeling powerless in big bureaucracies. They say the trend has left them with little room to exercise their professional judgment.
但无论是哪种情况,都有一个更深层的原因:长期以来医疗保健公司进行合并,这让员工在大型机构中感到势单力薄。他们表示,这一趋势让他们几乎没有发挥专业判断力的空间。
Allina said that it had made progress on reducing doctors’ workloads and that it was partnering with health care workers to address outstanding issues.
雅林娜表示,正在减轻医生工作量方面取得进展,并表示正在与医疗工作者合作,解决尚且存在的问题。
CVS said it was making “targeted investments” in pharmacies to improve staffing in response to employees’ feedback, while Walgreens said it was committed to ensuring that workers had the support they needed.
CVS表示,收到员工的反馈后,正在对药店进行“有针对性的投资”,以改进人员配备。沃尔格林承诺将确保员工得到所需要的支持。