OF AND
RELATING TO
LABOR
The first week, I thought everyone in my office was really friendly. I had a different trainer each day, but I soon realized that my trainers didn't really know how my section was run. Every section in the large clinic basically had its own system. They would just pull someone out of a section that wasn't busy that day and expect them to train me in my section.
One of the two doctors in my section expressed concern that I should know how to order medical tests that needed to be done, but the trainers had no clue. They would just ask the nurse how to order it if she was around, but she was off work about a third of the time I was there.
Another problem was that the nurse couldn't have cared less about how the office worked. She'd make appointments for patients to see her, but she wouldn't put these appointments on the schedule, and she wouldn't show up for work that day. Patients would come in, pissed as hell because nobody called and told them that the nurse wasn't gonna be in. I'd remind her the next day, but she'd just laugh it off.
The medical records were really organized poorly. Each doctor kept medical charts in his or her own office. But if a patient was gonna see a different doctor, then that chart would get taken by another section. Each day there was at least one chart you could not find. You'd have to go look in other offices, but each section filed charts differently, so you'd have to try to remember every doctor's file system, and sometimes you'd have to interrupt people. Half the time when you went searching for a file you'd just meet a brick wall. Where do you look next? You just don't!
One doctor was really a mess. He had charts all over his office, even on the floor; not even in piles, they were just slung around. He visited another clinic at times and had to transport files by car, and the nurse swore that half of the missing files must be in his car!
There was no central filing system. I complained about this, and people just said, "The doctors want it this way."
This was really bad, because I'd spend at least half my time looking for the friggin' charts, while my "trainer" was dealing with the patients and the calls that were coming in.
The third week I worked there, I was on my own without a trainer, and I started to feel that I was getting a handle on the system, but I also sort of got a feeling that something was wrong. There was a holiday office party and I came in and said 'hi' to some of the people I knew, and a couple of them just got a really funny look on their face.
They didn't say anything, didn't smile, weren't really cheerful or chatty like other people were. After the party, the personnel supervisor told me that one of my doctors had said that I wasn't working out. That doctor had left on vacation that week. I think they had planned it this way so I wouldn't go raise a stink with him.
ILLINOIS. In perhaps the worst loss for labor in the 1990s, the Caterpillar strike in Decatur, which began in June 1994, ended in early December. Striking employees voted by a large majority to reject the company's latest offer, but the United Auto Workers (UAW) union leaders nevertheless called off the strike the very next day.
WASHINGTON. There is an all-labor "Rally for Working Families" set for the Presidents' Day holiday February 19 in Olympia at the Capitol building. Call (800) 562-6102 for updates.
UNITED STATES. The US Supreme Court ruled in December that a union organizing method known as "salting" is legal. Salting means that a union organizer secretly takes a job at a non-union company and encourages workers at that company to form a union. (NW Labor Press)
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Contents on this page were published in the February/March, 1996 edition of the Washington Free
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