One of the main reasons employers want to keep healthcare private; enormous leverage against labor, organized or not…

  • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Isn’t it illegal for an employer to retaliate against striking unionized employees?

    • MisterD@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      yes but the law has no teeth. The punishment is a strongly worded letter from a judge and a fine that is cheaper than paying an employee.

      a General Strike is needed

      • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        That is probably not true if you look across the history of human civilization. I agree that it’s a recent development vis a vis growth in this area.

        • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The observation was intended as applying to the industrial era, since such is the time within which emerged hospitals as we now know them.

          However, I feel the same generalization holds more broadly. Hospitals have not been instituted to enrich an owner.

          • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            There’s a reason that hospital and hospitality are such related words. They were originally more like inns with physicians. You paid for a room and received treatment in it. Profit was certainly part of the picture.

            • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              There are many variations of the theme throughout history that may be called hospitals, but any large facility for housing the ill would have tended to have no private owner. Doctors visiting the homes of patients has been more common historically than patients visiting homes or offices of doctors.

  • aesopjah@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Even more reason to strike. Issue 1 in the demands: we still get healthcare when we strike

    • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Once you cross a certain line, you might as well be suggesting burning down the house and building a new one.

  • rchive@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Healthcare can stay private as far as I’m concerned, but it certainly shouldn’t be provided by the employer. Just give me more cash and let me buy my own.

    • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The profit motive definitely deforms the structure of medicine and medical services.

      A guarantee for coverage, with most providers being private, is the essence of the systems in many countries, and is far better than the system in the US.

      Yet, even considered globally, our world has been made bleaker by the domination of healthcare, for development, manufacturing, and distribution of technology and processes through private corporations, the features of such systems including monopolies, patents, and private investment.

      We might try to imagine medicinal systems being structured and practiced as a public good, emphasizing human life as having the highest value.

  • jeffw@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not trying to say this is good by any means, but isn’t that typical for strikes?

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Employers have a lot of options. They can threaten to fire people in large numbers, they can threaten various things, but by specifically threatening to cut off health care, their trying to put the workers to a life or death decision. In other words, this particular approach is definitely immoral and unjustifiable.