A staggering global survey of care workers reveals a deepening staffing crisis in the health and care sectors, with nearly 70 per cent of workers frequently understaffed and over a third (36.4%) saying they are always working short-handed. Released on the fifth anniversary of the W.H.O.’s COVID-19 pandemic declaration, the UNI Global Union report—based on responses from 11,233 workers across 63 countries—exposes a care system still in freefall.
Despite being hailed as heroes, care workers face chronic understaffing, poverty wages, and surging workplace violence, driving many out of the profession and leaving patients at risk. Workers without union protections are affected by this trend even more intensely. The same failures that cost tens of thousands of lives during the pandemic remain dangerously ignored.
To deal with these systemic issues, the survey’s recommends that policymakers and institutions:
- Increase wages and benefits. When nurses, caregivers and other medical staff are satisfied with their compensation, they are more likely to see their career as sustainable.
- Reduce short-staffing. Short-staffing is currently a systemic and global issue, contributing to unsustainable job conditions that drive attrition in the health and care sectors.
- Prevent violence and harassment by ensuring safe staffing and implementing minimum prevention policies such as those found in ILO convention 190.
- Focus on improving conditions for immigrant and non-immigrant workers alike. The report shows that solutions to the staffing crisis lie not in increased recruitment from abroad, but in addressing the underlying issues of low job quality in the sectors.
- Protect and expand union membership and collective bargaining. The survey finds that union members are far more likely to see their career as sustainable until retirement age, serving as a meaningful check on systemic turnover.