“The two sectors of the economy harboring the most professionals — health care and education — are under increasing pressure to cut costs. And expert machines are poised to take over. We’re on the verge of a wave of mobile health apps for measuring everything from your cholesterol to your blood pressure, along with diagnostic software that tells you what it means and what to do about it,”
says former US Secretary of Labor, professor and commentator Robert Reich.
We at 1199, the National Union of Hospital and Healthcare Employees, under the leadership of legendary President Henry Nicholas are already trying to prepare our members. We’re also preparing other yet to be union healthcare workers, and our organization for these technological changes in our industry.
First, we’re upgrading and preparing internal changes. We’re also looking to train workers who aren’t yet in our union.
We have increased our organizing, trying to build more density for more power to bargain about these and other issues.
President Nicholas speaks constantly to our members and staff about the imperative of change. Change is coming. We must change to meet the coming changes.
But it is not just the healthcare industry. The economy is changing in fundamental ways. We must address growing poverty, huge inequality, lower and lower paying jobs.
Robert Reich:
“Our underlying problem won’t be the number of jobs. It will be — it already is — the allocation of income and wealth… the economy toward which we’re hurtling — in which more and more is generated by fewer and fewer people who reap almost all the rewards, leaving the rest of us without enough purchasing power — can’t function. It may be that a redistribution of income and wealth from the rich owners of breakthrough technologies to the rest of us becomes the only means of making the future economy work.”
This is a discussion it is time to begin.
Image source: Apple