the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
March 2, 2026
Being a nurse or a nurse aide has always been a hard job, and for years it’s been getting worse as hospitals cut staff and pay to the bone.
Now the bosses have found a new hell: apps that use AI to pay nurses and aides as little as possible.
Apps like ShiftKey, ShiftMed, or CareRev use what are called “algorithmic pricing models” driven by AI. That is a fancy way of saying they are designed to pay each worker as little as possible for each shift.
The app calculates how much money to offer each specific worker for a particular shift based on all kinds of private information, including credit score and debt load. The more desperate the app thinks you are, the less it will offer.
These apps also give workers a rating. Call off, or piss off a supervisor, and you get a bad rating. The worse your rating, the lower your pay and the fewer shifts you are offered.
Sometimes, the app lets a nurse or aide bid for a shift, setting the lowest wage they will accept. No shifts available? Better lower how much you’ll take. This pits workers directly against each other to compete for shifts.
The pay on these apps is not necessarily lower than what a full time or travel nurse with the same level of training might make. But you have to pay a fee to the app for each shift you work. Plus, most of these apps classify workers as “contractors,” meaning they can’t get overtime pay, health insurance, unemployment insurance, workers comp, paid sick leave, or retirement. They offer no guaranteed shifts, and nurses report that shifts are often canceled by the employer at the last minute.
Of course, these apps make their owners money. They’re also useful for hospitals and nursing homes because they can pay as little as possible and only hire for exactly the legal minimum number of shifts they need. Plus, they are a way to block nurses from unionizing—a big concern for hospital bosses, given the recent nurses’ strikes in many cities across the country.
These kinds of apps have already replaced taxis, which used to be a relatively well-paying job, with the poverty wages of Uber and Lyft. Then they replaced delivery drivers with apps like DoorDash. Now they are coming for nurses. No worker is safe from this race to the bottom—and we all have the same interest in stopping it!