Wisconsin Job Watch

June 2010 data shows a dip in jobs, unemployment down.

- read more -

Washington, DC
November 29-30, 2007
SEIU Headquarters

With the support of the Sloan Foundation’s Industry Studies Program (ISP), the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organized a discussion on "high road" restructuring (i.e., advancing both competitiveness and the quality of jobs) in the health care industry. This discussion brought different ISP-connected and other researchers together with top research and strategy staff of SEIU, the major union active in the health care industry.

The questions that guided the discussion included: (1) what are major restructuring trends in the health care industry, management strategies, and past union response; (2) how might serious health insurance, quality control, and cost containment reform, of the sort that now seems imminent in national politics, change these; (3) what does the research tells us about the contribution workers and worker organizations can make on cost, quality, and efficiency in health care delivery; (4) (our basic question) what are the current/expected high-road restructuring possibilities, and what would these require from management, labor, and government; and, of course (5) what new research might help better answer these questions?

Click below for conference information and proceedings:

Agenda (pdf)

Participant List (pdf) and Bios (pdf)

Discussion Summary and Next Steps (pdf)

Presentations:

'The Drivers of US Health Care Reform' (ppt) (Lenny Mendonca and Bob Kocher, McKinsey & Company)

'Devices and Desires: The Consequences of National Health Care Reform on the National Union of Health Care Workers' (ppt) (David Kieffer, SEIU)

'Rx for Successful SEIU Strategy for Health Care' (ppt) (Chris Jennings, Jennings Policy Strategies, Inc.)

'Structure, Process, Outcomes' (ppt) (Dana Beth Weinberg, City University of New York, and Ann Frost, University of Western Ontario)

Click here for the Briefing Book with suggested readings for the event.

If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Jessa Lewis Valentine jessa@cows.org / 608-263-9984.