Would You Bid for a Job?

Roland Piquepaille writes "Several U.S. hospitals have found an innovative way to deal with nursing shortage. They post shift openings and the highest hourly rate they're willing to pay on their internal networks. Then, the nurses bid online for these extra shifts. The lowest bidders get the shifts and are notified by e-mail. This bidding process is almost certainly a good thing for the hospitals, but is it good for the nurses? Or safe for you? And what will happen if other industries also adopt auction systems? Imagine a company telling you, "Hey, you want to make some extra dollars by building this car or writing this piece of software? Name your price, and you'll make some more cash." What do you think of this bidding process? Read more before posting your comments."

Comments

Outsourcing

[Alien54]

Is like this, except it is segments of the us job market vs folks from overseas.

Another example of what happens when the primary corporate philosophy is predatory and parasite friendly.

it is a result of black and white accounting values, instead of seeing a full spectrum color photo of the situation, which means acknowledging more than personal selfish goals as important.

Survival is a multidimensional activity. Otherwise you sacrifice everyone else's quality of life for your selfish ends. Do that too often and you end up living inside a toliet bowl with the only rope out tied off to the toilet handle.

Re:Huge Scam, IMHO

[bluekanoodle]

You misunderstand the article and the nursing industry. This has been common for a few years. Its not that they are trying to get the cheapest labor possible, but rather fill all their slots due to a Nursing SHORTAGE. they have a hard time getting burses to fill those positions. Often they have no problem filling in some of their shifts, at x amount of dollars, but its hard to get All those shifts fills (nights weekends) so they use the bidding system to fill those slots. the nurse who fill those positions bid at a higher hourly rate then the normal shift rate. The hospital then fills those positions with the lowest bidder, which is still usually more then their standard rate, but usually much cheaper then the rate they would pay to an nursing "temp" agency or overtime to a staff nurse whose suffering burnout from working 60 hour weeks.

Here everyone wins, the hospital gets their hard to fill slots staffed, the nurses can command a higher rate for those premium shifts.

The healthcare industry has to be creative to cover those hard to fill shifts. my mom works at an RN at a nursing home, the home had a hard time getting weekends covered, people would call in sick etc, so they offered her a sweet deal. She contracts to work every weekend, no excuses, for 2 15 hours shifts, inexchange they pay her for 40 hours. This way she gets her whole week free, the home gets the shift filed, and the residents win because they have a consistent presences every weekend with a nurse who knows them and their history. If they used a agency nurse or rotated the schedule, the patients would have different nurses every weekend. As anyone who has worked with alzheimers patients can attest, a very structured, consistent environmnet can help immensely,