Put Up or Shut Up: What EM Can Learn from the Teamsters

If emergency physicians are going to have a chance at influencing healthcare policy in Washington, they’re going to need to get serious about organizing and fundraising. The power of unions is legendary. The Teamsters, formed in 1903, now boast more than 1.3 million members and are the 11th largest campaign contributor in the United States. Fortune magazine consistently ranks the National Education Association in the top 15 of its Washington Power 25 list for influence in the nation’s capital. In the words of Terry Moe, author of Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools, “the power of the unions to block change is the single most important thing that anyone needs to know about the politics of American education.” How did a group of teachers and teamsters become so powerful? It started when a critical number decided to collectively contribute significant funds to political campaigns. If 330,000 union members in Sacramento, for example, agree to contribute $1000 per year to political campaigning, that’s $330 million a year that can be spent influencing and/or controlling California’s legislative process. With this kind of influence, nearly every piece of legislature would need union approval before it has a chance of surviving a vote. Extend this across the country and the same logic—and influence—holds true. Now I am not suggesting that it is good for the political process to bend to the will of a single group purely because they’ve go...
Source: EPMonthly.com - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news