Q: Your latest research linked nursing home union representation to a 3.2% relative reduction in nurse staff turnover. What factors are at play?
A: Unions fight to make jobs better for workers, and that could mean higher wages and better benefits, safer working conditions … infection control policies, PPE and protection from COVID-19 during the pandemic. So in all the ways that unions fight to make jobs better, we would expect workers to stay in those jobs because they’re better jobs. I don’t think there’s anything particularly surprising about this. That being said, there hadn’t been previous studies of the determinants of nursing staff turnover in US nursing homes because of data issues.
Q: How is the positive effect on turnover magnified when a majority of nursing homes have a union?
A: In counties with very high unionization rates, that is 75% or more of nursing homes are unionized, we’re finding a 17% relative drop. … When that [competition] from non-union nursing homes, when that goes away, the results suggest that unions at the nursing home level are much more successful in getting the things that they’re fighting for. If you’re in a place where most nursing homes are unionized, you don’t have to worry as much about those non-union competitors bidding down in a sort of race-to-the-bottom.
Q: Unions and nursing home owners and operators have traditionally been adversaries. What about these findings might undercut that?
A: If employers can come to see unions as a partner in this, then there’s also an argument for broader acceptance of unionization throughout the nursing home industry as way of raising the floor throughout the industry in a way that could be beneficial for workers, for employers in terms of staff turnover, and especially for residents.
From the November 2023 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
