ABSTRACT
Strikes by health workers, usually premeditated collective actions taken with the realization that deeply rooted ethical and perhaps legal principles are being broken, have not yet resolved the underlying institutional seeds of work conflict. In few institutions of society is social and economic inequality among workers so marked and yet as generally unacknowledged as in the health systems of the western nations. Health professions have traditionally prided themselves on governing their own affairs, an authority confirmed by the state. Legislators who monitor expenditures from the public sector are increasingly seeking to establish a balance between competing social priorities, meet the health needs voiced by the public, and still provide health services more economically. National legislatures are one means of controlling the functions and working conditions of complex state health insurance programs. Unions of health workers have as yet been weak, have tended to have inexperienced direction, and have been intimidated in their affairs by the dominant health professions.
