Collective bargaining and strikes among physicians.

UNLIKE EMPLOYEES IN OTHER SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY, HEALTH CARE WORKERS ARE DIRECTED TOWARD ONE ULTIMATE GOAL: making people well and keeping them healthy. The development of collective bargaining and union activities during this century has had a great impact on all industries in the United States and the western world. However, only in recent years have workers in the health care sector been affected by the organized labor movement. The history of collective bargaining and strikes among physicians, the key decision-makers in the health care sector, is even more recent. Because of their central position, physicians' collective activity has had and will continue to have tremendous implications for the viability of the present health care system and the quality of patient care. Even though most physicians continue to function as individual, entrepreneurial service providers and "professionals," physicians as a group are more frequently being seen as members of a utility like industry. Their importance to individuals and society as a whole, it can be argued, is second to none; if physicians refuse to work there can be no worse set of outcomes. To estimate the potential future impact of growing collective action on the part of physicians, this article explores the general historical developments.