A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

UNION - questions

Posted: Oct 16, 2014

Has anyone done research on clerical or MT unions? Any organizers or organizations you can suggest? An internet search didn't yield anything, but I sent an email to a "service" union (closest I could find), haven't heard back. All this industry has ever done is decrease pay under the guise of making compensation competitive, which is to say "If you'll work for X company for that little, we'll lower our pay too." This job and the pride that came with it is a far cry from what it used to be. Patient safety, my @ss. I would just appreciate ANY info on starting one. I mean, actors (who basically pretend for a living) have a union. This really should be a no-brainer for a union organizer.

The big roadblock is the fact that so many MTs - work remotely

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How are you going to organize a union if you don't even know your fellow employees? How will you be able to communicate and correspond with potential members if you cannot ascertain that they are truly other MTs and not MTSO owners trying to sabotage your efforts?

Like any other kind of organization, unions have their negative aspects, but I am and have always been a staunch union supporter. The increasing imbalance of power between employer and employee demonstrates the need for workers to band together to provide a greater level of advocacy than that which can be attained by the individual navigating the system by himself.

If you have a viable idea on how to organize MTs, I would sincerely love to hear it.

roadblock - OP

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I do believe there are venues, including here, to reach out. I just don't have any info on starting one. For those of us who will do it as long as we can afford to...someone has to do something. JMO

agree but....sm - confused

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Didn't Nuance do a thing a while back where they wanted to know all the MLS's in your state and if you allowed, they were putting together a list of them???? What happened to that???
Nuance is so "advanced" and I do not understand why they do not have a message board similar to this one where you can go on and go under each hospital and ask questions to fellow MLS who maybe have worked longer on the account and also a board for QA so you can ask quality questions and get feedback. If they can create Fiesa I do not understand why they cannot create something like that. Sometimes I feel so isolated in my job and out of sync with other empolyees. If we did a weekly call or some kind of message board, I'd feel better. Not so "alone."

agree but.... - CuriousGeorge

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Keeping everyone disconnected is a strategy Nuance uses to have everyone feel as you do. One small voice in the forest cannot be heard as well as multiple voices rising from the ashes. There is strength in numbers and keeping women (and maybe a few men) tethered to the computer and voiceless is exactly what allows unfair business practices with this company to flourish.

HELP FROM FELLOW EMPLOYEES - sm

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I apologize for "yelling," but I wanted this to stand out.

A while back, I asked my TSM for a list of people on my accounts and received it, complete with their email and Spark addresses. I have since been able to Spark those people with questions. Some of us even privately email now (once the trust was established).

Further expounding on this... - same poster

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Make sure you see a person's work on your accounts before you Spark or email them. Make sure their reports line up with yours, i.e., same style types and great accuracy. Also, don't bash the company or your TSM or other employees on Spark. Save that for email, but only after you know someone and can trust them.

MT's really needed a union - a decade ago. - I am all for unionization, but -sm

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for the MT profession, I believe it's too late. Measures are already being set in place to eliminate the remaining US MTs in the not-too-distant future. Indian MTs will likely also disappear before long, as well, because the entire act of dictating reports is being eliminated and replaced with templates the doctors click the appropriate info into. Little wonder companies like M*Modal are jumping into coding. They're gearing up to dump medical transcription altogether.

However, I still believe in unions, and hope that once we all leave MT, we're able to find union-supported jobs in other fields.

Never take "No" for an answer - Dedication and faith

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Something I have learned in my life is that when someone tells you why you cannot do something, you come up with a solution. I believe something could be done through a website. Perhaps you have a local union who would not mind giving you some advice. Also, I believe phone calls and in-person visits are more effective than an e-mail, but the important message is do not give up.

Union - Can be done

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You could have a union representative in every state if necessary. Yes remote, but there must be a way to reach every MLS in this company or any other company through local media. I say go for it. Should have been done many moons ago.

Union - Fatigued Fingers

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This is the union I belonged to when I worked in-house. Maybe they could help.

http://www.seiu.org/

Union, if they can we can remote - anonmt

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If thousands of MTs and managers can work from home all over the states for hospitals all over the states, we can have a union...and a lot less complicated then what they have put us through. I say ASAP!

To Union Questions - CuriousGeorge

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I mentioned this same thing a few blogs back and notice it has been brought up as far back as 2010. I am happy it has been brought up again. I remain conflicted for some of the reasons that have been cited on this thread. That said, It is definitely corporate greed and now offshoring, (hello Mr. Ricci, you certainly are not the poster child for America, however, you are not alone, as I would imagine none of the top salaried 15 CEO's in the US are either) that has driven this field since the early 2000's. I know nothing about starting a union or whether one would help at this point, however, I hope it will continue to be brought up, just in case it could. Unless every voice, dialect, every individual patient and potential patient becomes a fingerprint in the Nuance Dragon system how can medical transcription disappear? Ever notice how absolutely awful the reports are that you must edit? We are organic, like snowflakes, just to a use a metaphor), I really cannot see this field completely being eliminated, however, jobs have been greatly reduced because of offshoring to India particularly. I have a hard time believing that off-shoring is really helping the American people in terms of reduction in healthcare costs which I am sure is the bundle of crap hospitals are fed by this company when they sign on. I do know that politically speaking, jobs in all industry have to return to us from India and to a certain extent from the Philippines. My son says will never happen. This is definitely what we should focus on in the next political arena.

Back to unions, there were a couple of medical transcriptionist unions that I could locate, one in Mass (AHDI Lounge July of 2010), the article gives the name of the woman who raised her voice at that time (interestingly enough, Mr. Ricci's territory) and the other in Ohio, Pittsburg Post-Gazette, October 29, 2013. I am sure there are others that have never made it to the internet. I think before a union could be effective, we would have to know how many strong it could serve and whether US transcriptionists banding together would actually even cause a hiccup in the Nuance monopoly and continued offshoring of American hospitals' work?
There must be some public resource to acquire that data.

Transcriptionists protest Nuance Communications - so tired

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http://www.post-gazette.com/business/2013/10/30/UPMC-transcriptionists-protest-after-outsourcing/stories/201310300037

Thanks for posting this! The author's name & - email at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - sm

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are located at the bottom of the article. It might be worth everyone's while to contact her and see if she wants to do a followup story.

There were hundreds of comments to her story by MTs across the country. One said she felt a "good thing about Nuance" was that they contracted with many hospitals, so there was "plenty of work". Now that, too, has changed. Not to mention higher productivity standards, higher quality standards, and now the specter of further-reduced pay coming with their "Exciting New Changes" in pay.

It would make an interesting and telling followup story to the original. And what better place to draw public attention to than Pittsburgh, which seems to be Ground Zero for offshoring, below-minimum-wage pay, and other scumbag business practices of MTSOs, many of which are headquartered in Pittsburgh.

I'm in... - MTinUSA

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Please keep us posted on this subject. I will be second in line right behind you!

Count me in - as well

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XX

Was a member when I worked in the hospital sm - former union member

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and not only did the union not understand incentive pay, their position was it should be eliminated because their other members don't get anything of the kind. It was all a moot point anyway because they had no problem with the hospital outsourcing all the transcription to Nuance and eliminating our positions from their payroll. Unions do not and cannot help here. Nuance will merely send all the work to India and you won't be working at all.

Unfortunately that ship has sailed. There really - is nothing left to unionize here.

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The majority of transcription is now done offshore and the hospitals and providers have come to demand those cheap rates. When they looked at their budgets a few years ago, transcription was a huge cost item and the quickest solution was to jump at the outsourcing (i.e. eliminate onsite overhead, benefits, etc etc) and then the offshoring came at an even cheaper cost which was the icing on their cake. Transcription is dead really with the entry of the electronic medical record and front end speech now. That leaves nothing left to unionize. The time to do it was about 10 years back, but I suspect it would have fizzled out by now anyway.

UNION - US Census Bureau of Labor and Statistics - CuriousGeorge

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I am not sure the ship has completely sailed, although I have been one who has been propounding that at times, as well.

Check out the US Census Bureau of Labor and Statistics as well as a link on that site called onetonline.org. (I intend to write the Labor and Statistics board today regarding the huge disconnect on what they have posted (2012) and what is really going on. They do indicate that between 2012 and 2022, there is a projected growth of 8+ which is the average growth for a field; however, they do not break this down into the number of jobs that are going to be available in US. So average growth is good if it means more stateside jobs. They erroneously have posted that 16.63 per hour is the median wage (2013). Does anyone make even make close to that with Nuance? Big disconnect. If numbers don't lie (which we know they can), there are 82,000 strong medical transcriptionists in the US with expected growth of 8% by 2022, approximately 1/4 posting on this site right now.

Some very mixed messages being delivered between what appears to be happening in the field and what is being reported to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. May not be a bad idea to do some letter writing in regards to that. It may not do anything to save some of our old souls that have been in the trenches for all these years, but certainly could do something to help the up and coming.

In view of the above, perhaps a union is not so delusional.

8 percent over a 10 year period really is not much. - Also note the last sentence under

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growth projection i.e. "However, employment growth will be limited due to increased productivity stemming from technological advances." Soon I imagine that last sentence will be expanded to .... and work performed in other countries. Sad, but true.

True 8% - CuriousGeorge

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That is true it does not sound like much, but don't lose sight that it is "average". Even accountants only will see a 10% increase over 10 years. One of the higher fields in medicine to see great increase is drug counselors at 31% projection. Anyway, I think the more pertinent question is about salary discrepancy and also of that 8% increase, how much of that will remain as jobs state-side. Those particulars are not clarified.

Secondly, I just consulted an attorney regarding unions and received this response back:

Unions are incredibly hard to organize and operate in many states because the laws are so pro-business and anti-union. A business owner can hire and fire at will and pay what he wants, as long as he doesn't discriminate against a class of people protected by federal law (age, gender, race, etc.) For more info, check out the National Labor Relations Board at nlrb.gov. They might have the info you want.

So raises the question, if the greater number of transcriptionists are women which I would presume to be true, is there a case concerning gender bias and pay discrimination?

Age discrimination too, disguised as "you - have too much experience." (N_M)

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I can document disability discrimination. - Happens alot.

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Unfortunately.

UNION - CuriousGeorge

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I had posted this secondarily under another blog on this thread, but wanted to post separately in regard to union.

I just consulted an attorney regarding unions and received this response back:

"Unions are incredibly hard to organize and operate in many states because the laws are so pro-business and anti-union. A business owner can hire and fire at will and pay what he wants, as long as he doesn't discriminate against a class of people protected by federal law (age, gender, race, etc.) For more info, check out the National Labor Relations Board at nlrb.gov. They might have the info you want."

So raises the question, if the greater number of transcriptionists are women which I would presume to be true, is there a case concerning gender bias and pay discrimination?

So (Mr. Ricci) is getting around this by hiring women in India who work pennies on the dollar compared to US women? Are they making substantial amounts of money or being pick-pocketed in the same manner as state-side transcriptionists? Anyway to find that out.

Perhaps I am overly cynical but,--sm - anon

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you would have a hard time convincing me that paying union dues is doing anything other than paying the salary of another person who would be unable to help me or my colleagues win any meaningful concessions from the major corporations. The combination of technology and cheap labor overseas would limit the efficacy of any strike, even if you were able to get members to comply. The problem with striking would be people like me who need the paycheck and cannot afford to do without it. If I could afford to do without pay for that time period, I would not be in transcription to begin with as VR has made my job incredibly DULL, DULL, DULL!

Discouraging posts - sm

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Always remember that this is a anonymous board, and we have no idea of the ulterior motives behind those posts trying to discourage MTs of joining together to improve the situation.

anonymous - CuriousGeorge

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I hope my note did not sound discouraging. I left my particular state off as I did not want to leave a trail. However, I will be the first in line to sign in if one can be started. I only wanted to get a feel about what the feasibility would be in my own state to start one and it was very dismal from the corporate lawyer I spoke to. Someone has begun a thread today of making more people aware that personal information is being offshored. I would be curious to know how many men are working in this field. I would bet not many and to me that may be an opportunity to show pay discrimination based on gender. I also want to mention that I looked into the dollar exchange in rupee to American dollars and the Indian women who are doing the work off-shore (do not know about the Philippines) are working at approximately 1.75 an hour for Nuance. Do you think any of those savings are being passed on to the cost of healthcare here in US. No, they are being stopped at the top CEO for the company. Ridiculous and totally unethical, but is exactly what has happened to destroy the middle class. Furthermore, 10.00 a day as compared to 50.00 to 60.00 in US is all folks in India need in order to be considered middle class. This off-shoring has got to stop and bring the jobs back to US as long as we have work force to do the work here.

Discouraging posts - nn

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I apologize. I meant to LIKE your post and hit the wrong one.

Discouraging posts - A dislike for an apology? - high horse?

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Some of you are priceless.

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