MTs and unions, and past mistakes: - s/msg

Regarding all the talk about unions below:  

     I once had a very good job, and was a very "Happy MT".  I worked inhouse.  I made great money.  I got vacations, 401K, paid sick days, good healthcare, etc. 

     So one day, while I was happily typing away on my Correcting Selectric, at my great little desk, at my great little job, a union organizer came to visit the department.  The hospital was actually considering having its employees unionize... as I recall there were actually quite a few benefits in it for them, as well, although I don't remember the details.

     The union organizer spoke with me at length about the benefits of forming a strong coalition of medical transcription specialists.  He pointed out the risks we faced in the future, but I was too blind, too comfortable, and too self-absorbed in my own happy little MT world, to think that things could ever do anything except just get better and better.

     "MTs don't need a union!" I chirped at him happily (albeit ignorantly), "We are in high demand!  We are in short supply!  Our skills can't be found by simply calling an employment agency, you know.  The doctors NEED us.  Without us to transcribe their patient care reports, they would lose their accreditation!"

     Even though I worked on a Selectric, I had actually had other MT jobs before that on computers, but back then, the Internet, if it existed at all, was still in its infancy, and none of us had even heard of it.  Most work was done inhouse.  The services that existed were mostly small companies, like the one I'd left when I moved to a new city and started working for "Happy-MT Hospital".  

     Over the years I watched friends and family, many with much higher educations than mine, and fancier jobs, lose them one by one to automation, outsourcing, insourcing temp-workers from India,  buyouts, layoffs, recessions, technology changes, etc.  Never once did I ever foresee that I would ever be anything but secure and comfortable in my MT job at "Happy-MT Hospital". 

     When the Internet became a part of our everyday lives, the union opportunity actually presented itself again, and still I, and others like me were still too blind to see the warning signs ahead.  Up until that point, the few MTs that worked at home usually lived close to their employers, and delivered tapes back and forth every day.  When the Internet made it easy for MTs to work from home, I saw only the possibility of hospitals being able to pay us more by moving us home, thus saving the cost of housing us onsite.  What never crossed my mind was that "home" could also mean across the state, across the country, or on the other side of the world. 

     Had we been unionized, it might not have been a guarantee that our jobs would be safe, as nothing in life is ever guaranteed.  But I think it would have played a large part in making sure that as technology changed, as globalization occured, etc., that those changes would be used in such a way as to BENEFIT the medical transcriptionist, not strip them of everything: Earnings, benefits, self-confidence, available work, and now, even their homes.

I think technology is basically a good thing, and that change is inevitable.  But doing what I did, dumbly believing "I'm special - nothing bad can ever happen to me!" is foolish.  Technology has to be embraced, but we also have to scrutinize it carefully to be sure it's not being used in place of us, or to cheat us out of what we work so hard to earn.   Had most of us said "yes" to coming together (instead of fighting all the time),  and using our voices in unison through a union, which is ultimately a much louder and more-respected voice than just the squeakly little mouse-voice that occasionally arises here and there from the rare MT who actually speaks up, our profession may have looked a lot different now, than it currently does.