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Copyright © Cambridge Political Economy Society

research-article

The rise and fall of customary wage differentials among nursing personnel in US hospitals: 1956–1985

Lisi Krall*

*State University of New York Cortland

Abstract

Between 1956 and 1985 the employment of registered nurses (RNs) relative to other nursing personnel rose despite constant relative wages among RNs, licensed practical nurses and nurses' aides. Over this 30-year period, hospital management proclaimed chronic shortages of RNs. Economists have used monopsonistic models to explain the persistence of these shortages. As an alternative to the monopsonistic model this paper presents an institutional argument for why hospital management sought to maintain relative wages among classes of nursing personnel while at the same time successfully raising the relative use of RNs through a variety of non-wage inducements and manipulations of RN supply.

... in most contexts the wage does not, and cannot, function to equate supply and demand. Instead, wage rates perform certain basic social and institutional functions. They define relationships between labor and management, between one group of workers and another ... (Michael Piore, 1979, p. 6)

Historically hospital administration seems to have been reluctant to grant salary increases to professional nurses. The size of the group and hence the high visibility to all employees of upward wage adjustment may have played a part in the decision. (Luther P. Christman, nursing educator, and Richard C. Jelinek, industrial engineer, 1967, p. 81)

Manuscript received July 17, 1992; final version received July 28, 1993.


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