Dartblog

More signs of poor management at DHMC in a story (which regrettably is not on-line) on Friday in the Valley News:

NEWS: Effort to Unionize DHMC Resumes Lebanon— After hearing complaints about a lack of raises, loss of vacation time, hospital overcrowding and mandatory overtime, union officials are making another bid to organize nurses at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

As I wrote regarding the Hanover Inn, “Don’t get me wrong, I am no supporter of labor unions, but I believe that the old saying is accurate: management gets the union that it deserves.”

Despite the Valley News’ particular emphasis on the material side of the nurses’ grievances, any experienced manager can see that the problem here is a lack of job satisfaction. Employees care much less about “a lack of raises, loss of vacation time, hospital overcrowding and mandatory overtime” than they do about being listened to, respected, appreciated, and given credit for their contributions to an institution. People want to work at a place that they value for its intelligence, efficiency, and effectiveness in making the lives of its customers better.

Want proof? At my own business, I have several former employees from the College and DHMC. They left those places despite receiving salaries and benefits in their new jobs that are a fraction of what they would have received from Dartmouth. Why would they do that? See the above.

Note: One other reason for rampant job dissatisfaction in these institutions is their “no fire” policies. When poor-quality workers are making as much money as high performers, the quality folks come to feel like chumps. Either they slack off, or leave, or simply believe that they are working for a lousy employer. At that point, a labor union starts to seem attractive.

Note: The Valley News story makes the following observation:

Workers are also unhappy that they’re losing one pay period’s worth of “earned time,” which amounts to between 10.5 and 13.5 hours for every two-week pay period they work. The hours are used for vacation, illness or holiday time off.

If you run the math on these figures (and if the VN and I haven’t made errors here), you conclude that for every year of work (26 two-week pay periods), an employee earns between 273 and 351 hours of time off. That’s between seven and nine weeks of paid time off each year (not counting statutory holidays.