When Doctors Join Unions

by Grace Budrys and Gladys Budrys

Book Overview

Current and anticipated changes in this country's health care system are likely to add momentum to the physicians' union movement, according to Grace Budrys. She documents the emergence and development of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD), founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 1972, and suggests it may be a harbinger of renewed organizing efforts throughout the country.Representing both salaried and private practice doctors,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801483549
• ISBN13: 9780801483547
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Why patients need unionized doctors

When Doctors Join Unions, Grace Budrys, Cornell University Press, 177 pages, c. 1997, describes the inexorable forces driving doctors into classical unions as opposed to more traditional medical associations and societies. Insightfully, Budrys shows that traditional private practice doctors, independent contractors, are joining with their salaried colleagues to sign up with unions even though only the salaried doctors are entitled to classical collective bargaining at this time. The motivation for both groups of doctors is similar. In private practice for-profit HMOs and managed care programs often delay or deny diagnostic studies and treatments prescribed by treating doctors. The doctors, untrained in negotiations, then find they have to challenge their own administrations to provide care. In government programs at the state, county, and federal levels, including Medicare and Medicaid, doctors find that burgeoning rules and regulations also prevent them from doing what patients need. This obstructionism unifies doctors, cuts across financial and remuneration incentives, and drives them toward unionization, especially towards the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD), affiliated with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest union in the AFL-CIO. Budrys states that the UAPD is "a harbinger signaling the emergence of new forms of collective representation" and concludes her book with these words about the UAPD: "I find it hard to imagine another organization that is in a better position to do so."