Amid rising labor militancy over the past few years, one group of workers has gone under the radar: medical residents. Also known as resident physicians or housestaff, medical residents are doctors who have finished medical school and are working in hospitals as apprentices on the path to getting independently licensed. They are the patient-facing backbone of hospital operations, working extremely long hours under stressful conditions for mediocre pay.
Over the past few years, from California to New England, medical residents have been unionizing and striking by the thousands. They’ve composed some of the largest new units to unionize in the United States. They labor in the strategic sector of health care, which intersects with multiple struggles around social justice and corporate power. They have the potential to work in coalition with others to address public health and other issues. Thousands of newly unionized medical residents will bring their union consciousness into the rest of their careers.
What do medical residents do? What’s behind their rising unionization? What challenges do they face at work? How do their struggles connect with larger struggles in society and the labor movement? To discuss these questions and more, Truthout spoke with two union medical residents who represent a cross-section of this growing part of the labor movement…