This is an example sketch of a Simulation Assignment.

Fields: Healthcare, but this simulation could be applied to most fields 

Roles: Nurse, Technician, Doctor, Resident, Home Health Aide, Medical Support Staff

Overview: You are a hospital worker at Joint Effort Medical Center, a general hospital in New York City. Recently, you and your colleagues have been facing difficult working conditions that you feel could be addressed by forming a union and demanding changes from the hospital’s management. You decide to form an organizing committee with a few devoted worker-organizers, with whom you will undertake the following assignments:

1. “Lay of the Land” Report: Members of the group research contemporary struggles in hospital labor – problems in healthcare workplaces across position, and examples of labor organizing in these settings – and present their research to a larger group of workers (the class).  

2. Establish Union Goals and Values: Team members draft individual statements that articulate their proposed goals and union values. This statement will be accompanied by a bibliography of “mentor” organizations that the team should follow.

3. Enact Shared Goals, Values, Agreements and Meeting Schedule: After reading each member’s statement, the organizing committee meets to enact their goals for the campaign, codify shared values for their nascent union, establish team agreements for doing the work, and a schedule for going forward with the next three weeks of work.

4. Interviews/Outreach: Members of the committee need to learn more about their colleagues’ working conditions, so each member will interview at least one person they know who works in healthcare (broadly defined) and learn about issues they deal with at work. Share highlights, themes and takeaways of the interview with the rest of the committee.

5. Action Planning and Making an Ask: As a committee, decide on an event or an action that would hypothetically be planned in this organizing campaign for the purpose of building membership and worker power. Create a flyer or some other distributable resource that will be used to advertise the event/action.

6. Reflections and Applications: Prepare for a final meeting with the regional organizer of your aspirational union (the instructor) by reflecting on the activities you’ve completed so far and making connections to actual workplaces you’re familiar with (or your potential future profession). At this meeting, each committee member shares their reflections and engages in facilitated discussion about the campaign.