Dr. Lee Sharma hosts Professor Johnnie Kallas to discuss the rise of fixed-duration strikes in healthcare. Learn how nurses and physicians leverage short-term strikes to advocate for better working conditions and patient safety, and why these actions are reshaping the U.S. healthcare system.
How are healthcare workers using strikes to improve patient care and working conditions? In this episode, Dr. Lee Sharma, hosts Professor Johnnie Kallas to share insights from his work tracking union and non-union strikes across the U.S., with a focus on the growing trend of fixed-duration strikes in healthcare. These short-term walkouts, often lasting one to five days, allow nurses and physicians to protest unsafe staffing ratios and working conditions while minimizing patient care disruptions. Drawing from his experience with the Service Employees International Union and California Nurses Association, Kallas discusses the economic and reputational leverage of these strikes, the unique regulatory environment under the National Labor Relations Act, and how post-COVID challenges have fueled labor activism. This episode is a must-listen for healthcare professionals navigating the evolving landscape of unionization and collective action.
Three Actionable Takeaways:
About the Show:
Behind every procedure, every patient encounter, lies an untold story of conflict and negotiation. Scalpel and Sword, hosted by Dr. Lee Sharma—physician, mediator, and guide—invites listeners into the unseen battles and breakthroughs of modern medicine. With real conversations, human stories, and practical tools, this podcast empowers physicians to reclaim their voices, sharpen their skills, and wield their healing power with both precision and purpose.
About the Guest:
Professor Johnnie Kallas is a labor relations scholar and director of the Labor Action Tracker at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. With a PhD from Cornell University, he has extensive experience as a labor organizer with the Service Employees International Union and California Nurses Association. His research focuses on healthcare strikes, union strategies, and the impact of collective action on patient care and working conditions.
Email: jkallas@illinois.edu
Website: https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/faculty-and-research/labor-action-tracker
About the Host:
Dr. Lee Sharma is a gynecologist based in Auburn, AL, with over 30 years of clinical experience. She holds a Master’s in Conflict Resolution and is passionate about helping colleagues navigate workplace challenges and thrive through open conversations and practical tools.
[00:00:00] Hello, my peaceful warriors. Welcome to the Scalpel and Sword Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst, and I'm so excited to have on the podcast today, professor Johnnie Kallas, professor Kallas at his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College. And then he also did his master's in PhD in industrial and Labor relations at Cornell University.
He's currently on faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, but he also is the director of the Labor Action Tracker, which I'm gonna be really excited to get into today, which follows all of the union and non-union strike activity in the United States. he's got a lot of experience in healthcare, and especially with nursing strikes and his.
Insight, especially on fixed duration strikes, which is where I first learned about 'em, is gonna be invaluable to us today. So welcome Professor Kallas. Thank you so much. It's great to be with you. Looking forward to our conversation. [00:01:00] Same. Same. So in reading, your interviews, your interest and labor relations goes way back.
It's really familial in its origin. yeah, that's a, great point. I first got interested actually in the labor movement. my stepdad worked as a labor lawyer actually in the southeast and, wow. In Alabama representing steel workers, and I think it's still District nine.
I went to a. Labor Education, pro Conference, down outside of Pensacola on the, panhandle. And I noticed, I was in high school, I was the only person under 40, and I was like, we need a little bit of youth and energy, in this movement. And Oberlin College is a place where you can, develop some youth and energy related to, activism.
So I got into it there and then, worked in the labor movement and now I'm researching. So it's been a full circle ride. Awesome. You also spent some time, I think, I can't remember if it was after your PhD at the Service Employees International Union. You also spent some time there, and that's the parent organization for the Council on Interns and Residents, which is one of the largest resident [00:02:00] unions and currently growing in numbers exponentially in the United States.
but I think you really got into tracking unions when you were doing your graduate work. Yeah, so I actually, after college I worked as a labor organizer for three years. Two with, SEIU service employees International Union on the, then known as the Fight for 15 campaign to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
And I was actually organizing home healthcare workers. in Cleveland and Memphis. And then I worked for a year with the California Nurses Association in the East Bay and the Bay Area. and then I got, as many organizers do, a little burnt out and decided to go down the more research academic track.
And that's where I got involved at Cornell with the Labor Action Tracker and, Some of my interest in researching healthcare, labor relations, but my experience as an organizer, with those two organizations, SEIU and the California Nurses Association certainly shaped, that future interest.
So the Labor Action Tracker actually looks at lots of things. It looks like union strikes, non-union strikes is looking at strikes [00:03:00] all over the country, all different professions. But one of the things. That I think you talked about a lot, which is the reason I really was excited to talk with you today was fixed duration strikes.
Because one of the things I think is happening now, especially as physicians are becoming more employed and thus exploring unions and joining unions. Not only is whether or not we should strike, because I think, and I would love to know your perspective on this, physicians have never been really, thought we could strike.
It was not something that we thought was available to us as a way of exercising our voice and power. mainly because of our professional responsibilities and our, love of our patients. But. Striking is something that when it's planned well and has a duration, can actually have lasting impact on the people who are trying to affect labor change.
Is that something you've seen in your research? Yeah, so it's such a great point. And I think I understand there are some very important distinctions between registered nurses and physicians. but I think there are also [00:04:00] some important parallels when it comes to, both groups of workers really taking their professional identity and pride seriously and really being patient care advocates.
At the end of the day. I understand, once again, there's difference and variation in terms of educational background, experience, et cetera. but I've certainly seen, so a lot of my recent. Research, as you mentioned, have focused on the emergence of, what I've termed fixed duration strikes also might be known as limited duration strikes, short term strikes.
Mm-hmm. and it's basically when workers, often union members in the healthcare setting because of particular, legal regulations, which I'll get to in a second. but workers, walk out on strike. for a predetermined time length, generally fewer than less than a week, oftentimes just one or two days, and then they'll unconditionally, return to work at the conclusion of the strike, regardless of whether they actually, make any meaningful progress on their.
Contract demands or negotiations or whatever it may be. so this strike is not just unique to healthcare. This is quite common across a lot of the service sector accommodation and food services. [00:05:00] even through 12 public education in certain settings. but I think it plays a particularly unique role in healthcare because it allows groups of workers who are also patient care advocates.
to walk out of the job and protest conditions that they view not as just harmful to themselves as workers, but harmful to the patients that they're trying to advocate for, but to do so in a way that does not require them to be out indefinitely from their patient care responsibilities. And I think that's why you see, and I've coded all strikes and.
The Labor Action Tracker database, which we began in January of 2021, and at least through the end of 2023, over 75% of all strikes in healthcare have been of a fixed duration. Mm-hmm. And I think partially it's because you are sacrificing as a union member, a lot less by going on a fixed duration strike.
You're losing less money, you're at, a much. significantly reduced chance of losing your job, which we can get into. But I think it's also this important patient care advocate standpoint where you can really claim that you're [00:06:00] advocating for your patients, but you're not walking out indefinitely. And that's certainly been a big factor behind, nurses strikes, and I think it's been a factor behind a few of the physician or resident strikes we've seen as well.
I'm happy also, I'll stop for a second to get into some of the legal regulatory environment that is different in healthcare. Than it isn't any other industry and plays a role here. But I'll, stop for now. No, I definitely wanna get into that because I think there's a lot of things as physicians, I mean, and we definitely, I think, have learned from watching what nurses and even doctors in other countries have done in terms of labor strikes.
Yeah. we've been able to see what the NHS has done. I mean, I think certainly what's going on in South Korea with the extended length of that strike has been really fascinating to watch. And I think also too, for a lot of physicians that are thinking about strikes, they. Really do see that going on strike for months and months and months is not only not tenable for patient care, first of all, because that's just horrible for the healthcare system.
But also I think one of the questions that comes up when people look at fixed duration [00:07:00] strikes is, are these really effective? Because like you said, most times if you're looking at a 48 hour or even a five day, you probably don't have a resolution to your issues when you go back. So our fixed duration strikes.
As effective as maybe talking about going on a longer duration, was that still powerful for the people who were on strike? Yeah. so it's a great point and where I think these types of strikes are different in healthcare than perhaps in, for example, the accommodation and food services industry is that healthcare workers have such greater bargaining power because when they walk off, even for a short period of time, and I'd say this is especially true of nurses and physicians, hospitals can't just completely shut down.
So just to, situate this in the regulatory context, what is unique? And I think important to note about the healthcare sectors and when healthcare workers were brought, under the National Labor Relations Act in 1974 as part of the Healthcare Amendments, they were covered by existing federal labor law, which exists, at least for now [00:08:00] to this day .
Um, but they do have to, provide a 10 day notice in advance. Not just of actually any walkout. What I've always found really interesting, even in advance of non-strike picketing outside of a hospital facility, which I don't actually understand the rationale for that. I understand the rationale.
If you're engaging in a work stop, but you need to give the employer mm-hmm. Usually the hospital, time to staff the facility. so that is unique. Healthcare unions have to provide that 10 day notice, and generally as part of that 10 day notice, they will write in their notice letter. whether or not they're gonna be returning to work at such and such date unconditionally, or whether the strike will be indefinite.
So there's also this sort of legal, component as well, the reason why. Mm-hmm. I think you have seen some of these fixed duration strikes be, somewhat effective. Is because, nurses or physicians walking out even for one or two days can impose considerable, not just reputational costs on hospitals, but real economic costs.
especially we saw this in late 21, early 22 when the contracts for traveling nurses absolutely exploded, [00:09:00] and you would've hospitals paying 200 something dollars an hour. for an emergency department nurse, nevermind what an OR nurse would cost. Mm-hmm. And they would have to fly in those nurses as part of temporary staffing agencies who work a minimum of five days, they're flown over from all over the country.
so generally, actually oftentimes what'll happen. Sometimes a one or two day fixed duration strike will be followed by a three or four day lockout because hospitals are stuck, with those five day staffing contracts by that temporary staffing agency. So the key difference here, and the reason why they can be effective is because they actually, it's not just a reputational cost on hospital, though that does exist.
There's a battle, in the PR department and the press mm-hmm. Et cetera. Hospital strikes are always well covered by the news because they impact the public similar to teacher strikes incredibly, but they actually have some real meaningful economic leverage. Now, when those contracts are generally resolved, does still tend to be weeks or months after because you once go, on one of these, [00:10:00] you know, one or two days strikes and the employer knows you're gonna return to work, well, you've lost all your immediate leverage, right?
But then the question is, through additional negotiations, is there another strike authorization maybe for, it's for a couple more days? there are some legal considerations. You can't just do this every couple of months. There are some legal restrictions on that, which we can get into a little bit.
that does matter who's in the White House and who controls the National Labor Relations Board, and that's obviously changed. but generally it could lead to a successful settlement, but it might take a few months. The best example, or a prominent example, is 15,000 nurses in September, 2022 across the state of Minnesota when on a three day strike for a better contract, especially around staffing demands.
Return to work unconditionally authorize the second strike in December of that year. But before they actually had to go on strike, they reached a pretty strong contract. And, you'll see cases like that at a smaller level, not all the time, they're not always effective, but one of the reasons they're, effective in healthcare especially, is because there is a real economic [00:11:00] leverage component of it that may not exist in other industries.
Absolutely. One of the things you mentioned is the reputational cost to the institution when there are, physicians, nurses, healthcare employees striking. And I think there's so many examples of institutions trying to create, negative light around the people who are striking saying, you know, oh, we pay them well, things like that.
we've seen that in the United States. We've seen that, you know. NHS. We've seen that in South Korea. I think South Korea. Initially the government tried to say, look at these greedy doctors. They really think they're making too much money and you should be very mad at them. And I think definitely there are hospitals and healthcare entities in the United States that have tried that with striking nurses and doctors.
What I think is interesting, and I'd love to know your perspective on this, is I think most of the time what I see is when nurses and doctors go on strike. Patients are aware, it's like, we know you don't want to, we know you're doing this for us. You know, when you look at staffing ratios and you go back to Minnesota, you know, they were working one in 12, one to [00:12:00] 14, that's insanity on a floor.
to have one nurse taking care of 14 patients. So they were striking four patient safety. They wanted to have, sure there was an appropriate ratio. As you have followed labor action with healthcare in the us, do you feel like that you see that trend where hospitals or healthcare tries to put that negative light, and do you feel like that's something that the public receives or they don't really have empathy?
They have more empathy for the nurses and doctors. Absolutely. And just to bring this back to also the distinction between a shorter strike and a longer strike, I've had multiple, nurse union leaders tell me that if you get into one of these longer strikes, you start, facing these claims by hospitals that you're abandoning your patients.
And this is the most damning claim that as a nurse or a physician, you can hear, because these are groups of workers who take their professional patient care responsibilities as seriously. Mm-hmm. you know, it's like an educator, teaching children except it's someone's, literally life on the line in a lot of ways.
Right. So absolutely that language often gets weaponized. It's also, as [00:13:00] you know, Dr. Sharma can be very gendered and oftentimes, especially with nurses, we're talking about a largely female workforce, but increasingly that's, becoming more true of physicians as well. and I think that battle is absolutely, fought over.
I do think what. Especially in the current climate post COVID and I understand COVID is about five years ago, but what has given healthcare workers some leverage around those arguments is these people are people who put their lives on the line to save other people for multiple years during a global pandemic.
And I understand. For a lot of reasons in this country, we're moving away from that experience in many different ways. But I think people still understand these are frontline heroes, right? Nurses have long been the most trusted profession in America. I dunno how many years running now. Their approval rating mm-hmm.
In terms of an occupation is something like 75 or 80% the last time I checked. so they are able to leverage that in these disputes, but it does get a little dicey. Especially in communities that are maybe facing their hospital being [00:14:00] shut down, or at least the service is significantly reduced and management through the airwaves, through the press, et cetera, as part of a longer strike, can play this language of look at these greedy, physicians, nurses who are abandoning their patients.
And that's the language that gets challenging. And I do think part of the reason you see these fixed duration strikes, it's much harder for hospitals to claim this when yes, we're walking out. To advocate for our patients, but we'll be back in two days or we'll be back in four days or we'll be back in a week.
I do think that's another advantage of these types of strikes. Mm, absolutely. you've mentioned that the NLRB included healthcare under their Agus in 1974, but we really didn't hear a lot about labor strikes in healthcare, nurses, doctors until much, much later. and obviously you've been tracking this since 20 January.
21. Yeah. But you've had a chance to follow this throughout your career. Why do you feel like we're seeing way more strikes now? So, and I wish I could, I [00:15:00] definitely think on the physician front, the fact we're seeing any physician strikes in the United States. I also think it says, and, you can speak to this, extremely well, but it says something a lot in the industry for physicians and how they're becoming.
You know, workers in many more cases and, having a lot of the same challenges that other employees and, the medical practice kind of face. But, it's hard to say definitively, and I wish we had the data going back. exactly. Mm-hmm. How many more strikes we're seeing, by healthcare unions more broadly.
But I do think a big reason that you're seeing this, especially the last few years. are the issues that healthcare workers faced before the pandemic really became exacerbated, Staffing. Health and safety and pay is always a huge issue, right? There's no getting away from that. Mm-hmm. So I think, you know, as a labor market has become more tight, as you know, nurses feel like they're being underpaid, which is what's leading to these sort of nursing shortages.
Mm-hmm. Um, you would just have more, stress and burden being placed by those onto those. [00:16:00] Healthcare workers on the front line and increasingly more problematic working conditions, and situations like that. So I think that's a big reason you've seen. I think it also in combination with just a shifting sort of understanding of, strikes and the labor movement more broadly from the general public that has given workers more leverage, not just in healthcare, but across a lot of industries.
But I think the combination of ongoing issues that have become exacerbated, since 2020. And just a rise in awareness of labor related issues and an increase in labor activism. Oh, strikes were not always in both healthcare and more broadly, were not seen as a tool to make gains for a long period of time in this country, they were seen as a last resort against concessionary bargaining by management, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, and I think that also was true in the healthcare setting, but what you've seen over the last few years is both healthcare workers. And workers more broadly in this country, really seeing strikes as a way to secure additional gains, secure staffing ratios, secure, better pay increases. And I [00:17:00] think that's sort of the dynamic you've seen over the last few years.
I 100% agree with you. I think an already stressed healthcare system got into the pandemic and the pandemic just magnified everything that was wrong with the healthcare system, and it just made it so much worse. And at a certain point. You had to deal with those issues. And so now I think you're seeing people with more ability to negotiate and who understand what they're negotiating for.
But the other thing I think you're seeing is just this rapid rise in employed physicians, you know, independents, we can't strike, but 75% of physicians in the United States are now employed. And a lot of physicians, I think went into the. Sphere of employment because it was, this is great. I get to roll in, I get to go to work, I get to go home.
I don't have any management issues. I'm not running a practice. But unfortunately, that gave a lot of the hiring entities more power. And as they had more power financially, they were able to try to dictate to physicians, you'll do this, you'll this. And I think in the pandemic. [00:18:00] You had so many doctors who were trying to do more with less, and in the pandemic, we sucked it up and did it.
And then once it was over, hospitals were like, oh, well we can keep making you do more with less. And so there had to be a point at which somehow physicians could gain that power back and gain that voice back. You're also seeing that I think more the rise of residents unionizing is absolutely exponential.
When I was a resident, again, I'm super old. I trained in the nineties, but we just accepted that we were slave labor. We, accepted that we were gonna work a hundred hour weeks making less we'd make at McDonald's. We knew that there was no wellness, there was no idea of like stress or burnout or how to learn to deal with that.
We didn't get business educations. We didn't know how to run a business. and looking back on it, I really do think that we just thought that's the way it was. We didn't question it. And now what I see is all these interns and residents that are coming out of medical school, they're so much [00:19:00] more aware.
Of the voices that they have, and they have way more avenues to use them. And so they're, not just advocating for themselves to make more money or work less hours, that's not what it's about. They actually do understand that there is a quality of life and existence that goes with organizing and having that unified voice, and I think that's why you're seeing so much more of that.
There's also, I think, a question mark from a lot of doctors about whether or not being in a union or being unionized is going to reflect negatively on them or puts them in a negative space with regards to their employers. one of the things that you track in, the Labor Action Tracker is union versus non-union strikes.
So do you have, do you. Follow that data for physicians, are there physicians that are unionized that are not striking or not in that space, that are still taking that labor action? Yeah, it's a great question. we've documented very few. I think I can count on one hand the number of [00:20:00] non-union healthcare strikes, and I can't even think of any of them being non-union physicians.
I think we have seen a little bit, maybe physicians like fighting for a first contract after organizing and they're still trying to negotiate, but it's really difficult for non-union healthcare workers to strike because of this 10 day notice requirement. Mm-hmm. Um. And, because of that, you just don't see, you would need a tremendous amount of coordination, usually with the help of some sort of labor organization to be able to bring workers together and undertake, that 10 day notice and really have a complete understanding of what that entails.
Because if you don't. Provide that 10 day notice. The consequences are quite serious. You lose protection under the NLRA. You could potentially be terminated for engaging in a work stoppage. There could even be some licensure problems, et cetera. Mm-hmm. So there are some real sort of serious implications.
So most of the healthcare strikes that we document, are certainly union [00:21:00] led or union affiliated, where that might not be the case in, for example, accommodation and food services, where you more often see, oh, there's a broken AC unit. We need to walk off the job just for our own personal safety that may be totally independent of a union affiliation.
I think a really good point that you make that I just wanna build off of and, that was very well said is, I think the dynamic, and this certainly was true for nurses for a long period of time, but they've broken away from it and it'll be interesting to trace physician organizing and striking over the next 30 years similar to nurse organizing and striking over the prior 30 years.
Um, is really this sort of class identification, right? I think. oftentimes physicians maybe socialize and trained to, you know, become more individuals as part of the top of the healthcare hierarchy, in order to, you know, they're experts, they're usually supervisors, they're directing work. but I think as you mentioned, you're starting to see a little bit more realization and recognition.
Of their sort of [00:22:00] class awareness of the fact that they are in a lot of ways, workers of these broader institutions who are also facing a ton of pressures from health insurance companies and HMOs, right? It's part of the whole sort of healthcare system here. so I'm not even. Putting it necessarily all at the blame of the, hospitals per se.
Mm-hmm. But I think you're starting to see that acknowledgement of class identity and collective action, though I think, I'm gonna guess that's still really challenging for a lot of physicians, especially some older physicians who may have been trained in a different time and place. Absolutely. I think that's something that we are learning from the youngers.
Yeah. We're seeing what they're doing. I. Love how you express the fact that as physicians we are taught to be very independent and very individualistic. We're very much in a silo, and I think for those of us that are older, again, we're looking at our younger generation, they do a much better job of being collaborative.
'cause they've been brought up that way. Yeah. And so we are learning how to be collaborative. I will say this is one of the things that I think is very encouraging to me is a lot of the older [00:23:00] physicians who look at the younger physicians who are trying to build that we, believe in a quality of life.
We believe in fair reimbursement. We believe in these things that make a stronger healthcare system. 'cause we have stronger providers. You do see the older doctors. Sympathize with that. They're not saying, oh my gosh, how terrible these young people are doing this. I think initially you did a little bit, I think you heard, oh my gosh, they're so lazy.
They don't wanna work, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But I think now what you're seeing is, wait a second, these kids really do have the right idea. They understand that we have to be healthy healers. We can't just work ourselves into the ground with no type of support or reimbursement. And so now what you're seeing is those older doctors supporting these younger doctors.
That's something that's, I think you're gonna see more of, you're going to see more of that consolidation. I also think you were talking about how the pandemic changed the healthcare system and changed a lot of minds about the way the system works and the flaws in it. And I know you know all about this.
back in the early, I think 19, late nineties, two thousands, the American [00:24:00] Medical Association tried to create a. A national physician bargaining unit called the Physicians for Responsible Negotiation, PRN. and it lasted for three years, I believe. I think it was one of those things, it was a good idea.
It was too early. There were not physicians that were ready to embrace that. They still saw labor unions as strikes as something that was professionally not acceptable for us. it was a great idea, just not the right time. So now I think as you say, and I totally agree with you. If we follow this trend in the next 5, 10, 15 years, we are going to see more physicians who are organizing and unionizing, who are going to use striking and especially the fixed duration strike as a way to help get these points across to the bigger healthcare systems.
I think you're just gonna see more and more of it. one of the things that I did love is that you did spend time as an actual labor negotiator for the California Nurses Association, so you were actively involved in [00:25:00] bargaining, advocating for these nurses, working with this administration and this healthcare hospital system.
What were some of the biggest takeaways you took from working in that situation? What did you learn? nurses are very passionate. no, I think you know what's really interesting, A couple of thoughts that I think can tie together some parts of our conversation. what's really interesting amongst healthcare unions in the US is you actually have quite a few different approaches to labor relations.
and I think it's partially because there are so many challenges as we've talked about facing the healthcare industry that really come into play when just negotiating. You're not really ever just negotiating paying and ben benefits in healthcare because you have patient care implications and it's always center of mind.
For hospital management and it's sort of center of mind for, practitioners and advocates. Right, right. So, I think what's interesting is you have these different sort of ideologies or approaches to unionism. For example, in, in the west coast, you have. [00:26:00] Something that would seem to be really appealing and could potentially be appealing to physicians.
this pretty intricate, labor management partnership at Kaiser Permanente Hospitals across the West coast, where you have mm-hmm. unions and management. And this has come under a lot of stress over the last few years, in the wake of the pandemic, but the partnership. Still exists in a couple different iterations.
really come together with the goal of fostering labor management collaboration, recognizing unions as legitimate actors, which most employers, both in healthcare and not in healthcare in the US do not, not true in other countries, but at least in this country, do not, and really committing to partnering with each other.
to reach collective bargaining agreements, ideally without having to resort to strikes or other sort of, confrontational actions to benefit both, you know, healthcare workers, but especially patients on the bottom line. There are some though, especially state level nurses, associations that have broken away from the American Nurses Association that have become much more sort of confrontational and adversarial nurses.[00:27:00]
Nurse union. So California Nurse Association was one of them. Mm-hmm. Uh, this is a union that proudly is anti partnership. They commit to a much more sort of traditional adversarial approach to labor relations. Um, and they would argue, and in some ways I do agree. I think there are arguments on both sides and there are certain conditions when each approach could be more effective, that they really need to be the.
voice against, further privatization and corporatization of our healthcare system. Right. And in order to do that mm-hmm. It's really difficult to partner, with employers. You have to fight for, fight against employers and stand up for things in their opinion, like Medicare for all or more progressive sort of policymaking, et cetera.
So you actually have, what I learned is you have a. A lot of different approaches to labor relations in this healthcare space that really varies based on the labor organization and it can have meaningful impacts for outcomes at the, bargaining table. So that might have been, I don't know if that's a little bit more niche than you were expecting me to go with that question, but that's, and you see this a lot.
[00:28:00] California Nurses Association, New York State Nurse Association, Minnesota, some of these, state nurses associations that broke away from the A NA. and now are sort of their own. Some of them are organized under National Nurses United, but generally their sort of own state, affiliated nurses union.
that differs considerably from, other labor organizations. But I would also say at the end of the day, and this relates to the commentary on strikes, you know. Nurses are patient care advocates. and really this identity around patient care advocacy and being on the front lines is just so instrumental, not just at the bargaining table, but in their willingness to fight.
And I think that's why you see nurses, you though you would think, maybe not compared to physicians, but compared to a lot of other healthcare workers or workers more broadly, are really protective of their occupational identity and they're willing to fight for that. Protecting their occupational identity as well.
Mm-hmm. And it's so interesting too, because especially when you talk about this California Nurse Association and these organizations that have broken [00:29:00] away, they're not just advocating, like you said, for face staffing ratios and stuff. They're advocating for policy. They're actually making, and there are lots of.
Other places in the United States and all over the world that are looking at those disputes and those labor strikes, because the policy that's coming out of that is going to affect other people. I think California especially has been a leader, not just for nurses, but also for residents. one of my former medical students is a peds resident at uc, San Diego, and she sent me her first day schedule.
She has mandatory lunch breaks. she has like a nine, o'clock yoga break. I've had nurses that have been out there doing travel nursing that, their staffing ratio is one in four, but they also have two float nurses. If they're there to help you and they're coming from the south where they may have worked one in 10.
Yeah. And so they're going to California going, I have four patients and I have two nurses who are willing to help me. This is work. But there again, California fought for that. And it's like you [00:30:00] can't deny the fact that the reason why they have those things, the reason why the residents have quality of life and the reason why the nurses have these staffing issues and the support is because they fought for them.
Absolutely. So as this policy, people start looking at California or looking at Minnesota and looking what they're fighting for, that policy does trickle over to other places. You can't keep it out. And so if someone like me in Alabama has heard what's going on in California. It doesn't take long for people in my part of the world to start fighting for that.
And so I think this is the beauty of what you're doing. I think the beauty of the Labor Action Tracker and the work that you're doing is helping everybody in healthcare, physicians, nurses, all of the health professionals be aware that they have a voice, that they have power. And I think the larger implications of what places like California has done with their nurses is that it has potential to change healthcare everywhere.
Not just for them. And so this is why I love the work that you're doing. I was fascinated to read about the work that you're [00:31:00] doing. professor Kallas, if people want to get in touch with you or find out more about your work, how would they do that? Absolutely. Well, first of all, please, as Dr.
Sharma, you've promoted, please visit the Labor Action Tracker. You can just type a Google search or any sort of search labor action tracker. It'll come up. It's a really great interactive map that's publicly accessible. And you can search for strikes by industry plus demand size, et cetera.
Going back to January of 2021. And for those, Researchers or anybody interested in a spreadsheet version of our data, we make that publicly available. And you can reach out to me at J Kaas, K-A-L-L-A-S, at illinois.edu or just do a Google search for my name that'll come up. I'm always happy to provide data or talk about the tracker, healthcare, labor relations more broadly.
It's a big, passion of mine and I appreciate the time. Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here, professor Kallas. We really appreciate it. So everybody who joined us today on Scalpel and Sword, thank you so much for being here today and as always, be at peace.[00:32:00]