[mjangle1985]

Just very generally speaking, a friend of mine works in a nursing home and is part of a nursing union. They work in PA where we had the same kinds of orders.

Generally their working conditions have been safer than I've read about in other homes and hospitals. They did not allow staff to interact with patients unmasked, as opposed to non-union work environments that required nurses to work unmasked or with insufficient PPE (often times forced to work with covid positive or suspected positive patients)

They established isolation units for covid suspected patients and provided proper PPE for those units (as opposed to other nursing homes that did not do this and allowed covid suspected cases to interact with other patients). Additionally the union worked independently to attempt to acquire PPE for their union members above what nursing homes/hospitals provided.

While that's only one example of a union environment my impression is that these things were not the norm during the start of the pandemic and existed primarily in union nursing environments.

All that said it wouldn't surprise me at all if the effect found in the study was caused by having a union.

[caseysoftware]

This is way more interesting because (if true at scale) it's an example of a union working to protect their members in real, practical, day to day ways.

[bsder]

> union working to protect their members in real, practical, day to day ways.

Unions are normally really good at this.

One of the standard responses to managers asking for something stupid in a steel mill was "Get the book". "The book" defined the procedures, equipment, and training required for most tasks. This is fairly normal for most union shops.

It's a lot easier to tell a manager to pound sand when he asks you to do something stupid when you know the union will back you up.

[rbg246]

I don't know about US unions but work safety is the bread and butter of unions in Australia.

[mjangle1985]

Collective wage and benefit bargaining tends to be the main focus of many unions. I'd say in the instance of this particular Nurses Union the union also advocated well and often for the safety of their nurses. So yes they do ensure worker safety but I don't think it's thought of as much as collective bargaining.

[rbg246]

But remember collective bargaining isn't just how much per hour you earn, it's also how many hours in a day you work, how many days a week you work.

It's also when you can retire, whether you get a pension.

In addition but very importantly how much effort does your employer need to put into keeping its employees safe.

These were work conditions that were first collectively bargained for before unions then lobbied governments to enact them into law

I just did a quick search on US workplace safety ( I assumed you were US sorry if I guessed wrong).

https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats

Worker deaths have halved since workplace safety came into play in 1970, this wouldn't have been enacted if left up to companies as it is much cheaper to find an uninjured worker than it is to implement safe working conditions (I'm generalising obviously but I think it holds). It would have been heavy collective bargaining from unions that made this happen.

Also thank you for sharing the original story it was a really interesting anecdote.

[rsynnott]

I mean... I'm not sure why that would be surprising? That's been a thing since the dawn of unions; for early industrial unions it would have been one of the biggest concerns.