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Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

I mean, nurses are unionized and are high-wage.

At the end of the day, unions are a means to organize labor. Individual workers have very little power against large corporations, especially if they end up conspiring with each other. You could take them to court, but they have more lawyers and more money to spend on them. We see the benefits of non-union representation now, but what happens when tech turns from feast to famine?

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There's also actors and athletes.

Doctors aren’t unionized anywhere I know of. Do you have an example of a doctors’ union?

A doctor friend was telling me the other day that he doesn't know of an instance, in contrast to the nurses' unions.

The UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Medical_Association

Here's them going on strike the other year: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/31/bma-announce...

This made national news a while ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/business/doctors-unionize...

(written before their contract was ratified)

They have a professional association which performs some of the same responsibilities as a union, but its not 1:1

Many employed doctors are in a union in Germany.

medical practices seem to classify hired physicians as contractors, not employees

Controlling supply is the important piece, not being in a union. Once you limit the supply and limit your competition, you don't need a "union". They make up the leadership of the organizations that setup funding for the residency positions, which control how many doctors can be trained every year, effectively controlling the supply of doctors. No one, other than doctors, is incentivized to keep this supply constrained, which I assume is due to lobbying by doctors.

>Medicare-supported training slots are frozen where they existed almost two decades ago, perpetuating inequities in the geographic distribution of training slots and ignoring changes in the geography and demography of the U.S. population

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK248024/

https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71178/gme_gme0012.html

http://www.nrmp.org/board-of-directors/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Resident_Matching_Pro...

The AMA is not a union. Unions don’t restrict the supply of labor. They just help workers collectively negotiate for pay and conditions. Anyone can join a union, even at a “union shop” by getting hired at a place that is unionized. I was a UFCW member in college. Eligibility was automatic after I got hired.

Residents, interns and fellows are unionized in some states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_Interns_%26_Resid...

Doctors that work for the VA are unionized...as are generally doctors that work for the CA state prison and mental hospital systems.

Sweden - https://slf.se/om-oss/ Denmark - https://www.laeger.dk/english Norway - http://legeforeningen.no/english/

How much do nurses earn in US? Pretty sure they are low pay in EU in contrast to doctors.

Average salaries by state: https://nursesalaryguide.net/nurse-salary-by-state/

Median household income in the US is $59K. So the average nurse salary approaches the median of what a two-person household makes in America.

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