DrParasite
The fire extinguisher is not just for show
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So you went from garuntee (the word is actually guarantee), to this
So your credibility on knowing what's going on isn't really all that inspiring.
In case you were wondering, strikes in healthcare 1) rarely work 2) when they do work, they often have unintended consequences, and 3) make it hard for those employees, who are currently underpaid and often living paycheck to paycheck, to go on strike, where their personal finances will get even tighter with all the unpaid bills. It gets even worse when you have family and are the breadwinner for your entire family (spouse and kids).
The threat of a strike is often more effective, as it forces management to take the demands of the union seriously, especially when they calculate how much money they will lose, or how much they will need to spend to mitigate the strike. Plus the negative PR, but in reality, as long as they don't get sued, or lose too much money, hospital management won't lose sleep over it.
It's poor management to not have contingency plans, especially in healthcare. At the last hospital nurses strike I was swept up in (EMS wasn't part of the union, but we had nurses who worked with us who were unionized), the hospital had professional strike breaking nurses that staffed at the hospital the day the strike started, with nursing management personnel working on the units and training the temp staff. Business as usual continued, but the hospital was staffed with out of towners, so things didn't run as smoothly. Some striking nurses found other jobs at other hospitals and never returned, but at the end, the strike ended, and a lot of the capital improvements and money for raises, new staff, and newly created positions, ended up going to pay the strike expenses.
As long as AMR can move people from another division to cover the strikers, and they don't break any contracts, they won't care much. Yeah, it's inconvenient, yeah, they will need to pay OT, but I guarantee no one in AMR's upper management will lose sleep over it, at least no more than their regular staffing issues.
Listen, I'm pro union, support labor, think EMS unions are a good thing (provided management is willing to work with labor on a good contract). But I'm also a realist, have seen what happens when public safety and healthcare strike, and know that in an industry full of people who are using EMS as a stepping stone until something else, where they will change companies in a heartbeat because another places pays more, and who live paycheck to paycheck, striking and losing that paycheck is not as appealing as you think.
But maybe I'm wrong, and you guys will strike, and AMR's management will roll over and give you everything you want, conditions will improve drastically, and there will be no unintended consequences. Maybe Riverside County Ca will be the anomaly, in all of healthcare...
or maybe AMR will lose the contract lay everyone off, another low quality for profit company will get the contract, hire all the former AMR staff for lower pay and worse conditions (because we all need to work), and things will be even worse. Or maybe AMR will just pay people from other divisions OT, use them as strike breaking providers, and after a month, and all the Riverside employee's mortgages and rents come do, and they decided they need that income to put a roof over their heads and feed their family....
Good luck.
