Dozens of resident physicians and union supporters spent part of the lunch hour rallying outside of Boston Medical Center Thursday.
After three months of contract negotiations, Dr. Taha Khan says they have not reached an agreement on compensation.
“It’s a lot of factors but mainly it’s inflation and our salaries and wages haven’t increased with inflation as they should. It’s becoming so expensive and almost unaffordable to live here, Khan said.
These medical professionals are joining the growing number of industries taking their collective bargaining efforts to the streets in recent months. We’ve seen Massachusetts teachers in Woburn, Malden and Haverhill walking off the job, despite rules that bar public employees from striking in the state.
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“Coming out of the pandemic where there was all this talk about valuing essential workers, well the truth was that they were valued in rhetoric but not in compensation,” explained Mark Elrich, a fellow at the Center for Labor and Just Economic Development at Harvard Law School.
He was also a longtime union member and leader.
He said the strikes happening nationwide with actors and writers and threats of a strike among Teamsters and UPS workers are the culmination of half a century of worsening working conditions and industry changes.
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“All this future of work, automation technology, live-streaming...that is creating grounds for turmoil and I think for uncertainty for the future of working people and I think that’s part of what you are seeing with all this increased activity,” he said.
The Economic Policy Institute reports the number of workers involved in major strikes increased by nearly 50% last year, and that doesn’t include smaller-scale work stoppages.
“I think we recognize that there is power in collective bargaining because you are using the voices of people who are affected by these issues to bring about change,” Khan said.
