TUAC called on policy makers to put care workers at the centre of technology decisions in healthcare at the OECD Forum on Gender Equality, held in Paris on 8–9 July. In a session on digital technologies, data and the future of the care economy, trade unions warned that new tools are no quick fix for a sector in deep crisis.
That crisis has been decades in the making. Under-investment in national healthcare systems has resulted in a worldwide shortage of frontline workers. Across countries, trade union surveys of healthcare workers report heavy workloads, long hours, high stress, low pay, precarious contracts and little control over their work. Hospital staff surveys indicate that 56% of nurses across the OECD – the majority of whom are women – perceive staff levels and work pace to be unsafe, and a large proportion are thinking of leaving their jobs.
Technology could ease some of these pressures, but only, trade unions argue, if it answers to the people using it. When asked what they want from digital tools, nurses are clear: reduced administrative tasks, more time and mental space to care. Technology adoption, however, tends to be driven by institutional priorities rather than by the needs of frontline staff. Predictive analytics are a telling example – they attract investment, but nurses report that they add to workloads instead of easing them.
TUAC pressed for the workers who use these technologies every day to help decide which are introduced and how. A recent ILO working paper captures the difference that makes. Hospital technologies succeeded when they were designed with nurses around problems everyone recognised, and failed when institutional prestige drove the investment. Union representation, the paper finds, helps bring nurses’ priorities to the fore.
TUAC also called on policy makers to recognise and value the inherently human nature of care work, and to ensure that digitalisation does not degrade care professions through deskilling.
The care workforce is overwhelmingly female, underpaid and overstretched. When technology decisions are made without these workers at the table, the result is tools that serve institutional interests at the expense of those delivering care. Collective bargaining is essential to ensure digital technologies effectively support care workers – and to address the structural undervaluation of care work that drives this crisis.
Photo credit: OECD
