The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has made it their mission to unionize California hospitals saying it will “lead to safer conditions for our patients.”
The data tells a different story.
Today, the Center for Union Facts released a new, first-of-its-kind report showing that hospitals that employ nurses who are unionized with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) statistically have worse patient outcomes.
The report analyzes the ratings of hospitals in the state of California by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The CMS scoring system summarizes a variety of patient outcomes, including mortality rates, readmission rates, complication rates, and provides a score between 1-5 based on each individual hospitals’ performance. The report focused on California, as that is where the SEIU has a large concentration of unionized hospitals.
CUF’s analysis shows that, when compared to non-unionized hospitals and hospitals where nurses are represented by other unions, SEIU-affiliated hospitals correlated with lower overall hospital ratings .
The SEIU has a controversial history of harmful hospital strikes and allegations of abuse and harassment from the union’s own employees. The SEIU has had to pay out millions in response to legal filings and allegations, likely causing the hospitals to suffer further from lack of resources. It’s unfortunate but not surprising that the union seems to be doing much more harm than good for patients at California hospitals.
Highlights from the report include:
- Service Employees International Union (SEIU) representation for nurses correlates with a lower overall hospital rating by as much as -0.95 stars (out of five stars) compared to hospitals with nurses represented by no unions or other unions.
- Despite accounting for less than 11% (271 out of 251) of California hospitals, SEIU unionized hospitals account for 26.7% of all 1-star hospitals in California.
- SEIU-unionized hospitals failed to record a single 5-star rating in California, while 17.4% of non-unionized hospitals and 12.3% of hospitals represented by other nurses’ unions achieved a 5-star rating.
- SEIU-unionized hospitals are responsible for a disproportionate share of the lowest-rated hospitals: 11.8% of Los Angeles hospitals were rated 1-star, while 35.3% of SEIU hospitals in Los Angeles County scored 1-star.
- Instead of caring for patients, many hospitals are forced to utilize resources and money towards mitigating damages of any strike the SEIU may impose, this has included hiring a backup registered nursing staff to reduce its risk in the case of an SEIU strike.
The union is working relentlessly to expand their presence at hospitals and healthcare facilities across the country, and it’s our responsibility to call attention to the negative consequences of associating with an organization that makes the lives of patients harder, not better.