Privatization and the Working Conditions of Health Care Support Staff

Abstract

Using an assisted survey approach, we compare health care service employees' perceptions of work between public and privatized health care settings. Results indicate that laundry, maintenance, food service, and housekeeping staff employed by privately managed medical institutions have more negative perceptions of job rewards than their public sector counterparts, with no difference in perceptions of supervisor support, work stress, autonomy, and opportunity. A supplementary analysis comparing three organization types: pure-public, pure-private, and public-private shows that workers perceive higher work stress and lower rewards in public-private organizations, while workers at pure-private organizations perceive low rewards, low supervisor support, and low opportunity. Our interpretation is that privatization lowers workers' perception of rewards in completely privatized organizations and in public organizations that privatize a proportion of services.