Northwest labor press., May 05, 2006, Page 9, Image 9

Think Again •
By Tim Nesbitt
The week of the living uninsured
T
his is “Cover the Uninsured
Week” – the fourth such week in
four years. They haven’t been good
weeks or good years.
Year after year, the sponsors of
“Cover the Uninsured Week” report
higher numbers of Americans without
health insurance. Four years ago,
40.9 million Americans were unin-
sured. Now it’s 45.8 million and
climbing.
This is like watching a horror
movie. Call it “The Week of the Liv-
ing Uninsured.” In every one of these
weeks since 2003, we’ve watched lab-
coated health professionals and busi-
ness-suited executives gather at our
health clinics to talk about this prob-
lem with earnest concern. And still the
uninsured emerge in larger numbers
every year.
Maybe I’m being too harsh.
“Cover the Uninsured Week” has at
least called attention to a major fail-
ing of our health care system. You can
go to its Web site at www.CoverThe
Uninsured.org and discover new in-
formation about the epidemic of the
uninsured in America. Examples:
More than half of Americans without
health insurance don’t get health care
when they need it, and 80 percent of
the uninsured are in families headed
by working adults.
But the producers of “Cover the
Uninsured Week” continue to focus
more on the consequences of this epi-
demic and less on its causes. And
they have little to say about its cures.
Go to the Kaiser Family Founda-
tion Web site at www.kff.org, and
you’ll find a more blunt assessment of
why more and more Americans are
joining the ranks of the uninsured:
“The number of uninsured age 65 and
under increased by nearly six million
between 2000 and 2004, primarily
due to a decline in employer-spon-
sored insurance.” The foundation
notes that, during that four-year pe-
riod, the proportion of Americans un-
der 65 who get health insurance
through employment declined by five
percent. That’s a huge change, which
computes to another six million
Americans who no longer bring home
their health care with their paychecks.
At some point, this debate about
consequences has to recognize causes
and get real about cures. And this is
where the sponsors and partners be-
hind “Cover the Uninsured Week,”
who range from the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, health insurers and drug
companies to consumer groups, foun-
dations and the AFL-CIO, are hope-
lessly deadlocked.
You can’t find a straightforward
admission that employers are aban-
doning health care for their workers
on the “Cover the Uninsured Week”
Web site. And if you click on “What
you can do,” you’re asked to sign an
e-mail letter to your congressperson
to “urge you to make health coverage
for Americans your top priority.” Any
member of Congress on the receiving
end of that message can easily click
the reply button to say that he or she
agrees with you and is working on
common-sense solutions that will be
fair to employers, workers and con-
sumers alike. This exchange will be
another triumph of form letters over
substance.
A problem this large doesn’t re-
main unsolved for so long because
there aren’t solutions. It remains un-
solved because vested interests with
political clout can block solutions that
will cost them money.
That’s the real horror of our feck-
less search for health care reform. We
are blocked at every turn as we search
for ways to solve the problems of
shrinking coverage and rising costs.
Measures to force employers to pay
their fair share for their workers’
health insurance are nixed by the busi-
ness community. Expansions of
Medicare to cover children are
blocked by the government-haters
who would rather privatize Medicare
than expand it. Purchasing pools for
prescription drugs are vetoed by the
pharmaceutical lobby.
Meanwhile, as we become more
desperate for solutions, we stumble
onto paths of least resistance which
offer some hope of universal health
care that business groups, anti-gov-
ernment ideologues and drug com-
pany lobbyists won’t oppose.
Massachusetts just went down one
of those benighted paths. Here’s
where it leads: Don’t count on your
employer to provide health insurance,
buy your own.
Meanwhile, if we have to keep re-
living this week, we should demand a
different script. Maybe we should
call it “Desperate Working Families
Week.” But, whatever the title, we
need to demand more reality in this
production and a plot line that leads
to action.
The realities are compelling
enough to hold most viewers’ atten-
tion. Employers are abandoning
health insurance for their workers, not
only because they can, but because
they gain economic advantage over
their competitors by doing so. And
we as taxpayers will never be able to
make up for the human and economic
costs of this abandonment by expand-
ing government health care to work-
ing families — because the number of
working people without health care is
multiplying beyond our capacity to
cover them with our tax dollars.
Let’s ask America’s working fam-
ilies to defend the principle that we
should be able to earn our health care
from our jobs. That doesn’t mean that
employers have to sponsor separate
health insurance plans, but it does
mean that they should contribute to a
system that keeps health insurance af-
fordable for all working families.
Otherwise, if we let employers
abandon health care for their workers,
we’ll be left with two very scary
choices: Buy your own health insur-
ance or join the ranks of the unin-
sured.
Tim Nesbitt is a former president of the
Oregon AFL-CIO.
State legislators back increase in U.S. minimum wage
At the urging of the National Labor
Caucus, the National Conference of
State Legislatures (NCSL), a bipartisan
organization comprised of legislators
from across the country, voted over-
whelmingly April 8 to support a federal
minimum wage increase.
“Oregon has shown the nation that
we can have both fair wages and robust
economic growth. I’m proud that our
state is again leading the way,” said Ore-
gon State Rep. Diane Rosenbaum, a
member of Communications Workers
of America Local 7901 and president of
MAY 5, 2006
the National Labor Caucus.
Oregon voters passed Measure 26 in
2002 to raise the state’s minimum wage
and adjust it to reflect the increased cost
of living. Rosenbaum was a sponsor of
that legislation. “The real value of the
federal minimum wage is at its lowest
level since 1955 because it has not kept
up with inflation,” Rosenbaum said.
With rising gas and housing prices,
working families are struggling. No one
who works full time should be forced
to live in poverty.”
The NCSL resolution commits the
lobbying group to support bills that
have already been introduced at the fed-
eral level. Senate Bill 1062, introduced
by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.),
and House Resolution 2429, introduced
by Congressman George Miller (D-
Calif.), were jointly introduced in May
2005, and would raise the minimum
wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps.
The resolution includes opposition
to a required tip credit for employers of
tipped employees in states where the
minimum wage rate is higher than the
federal rate of $5.15.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Union wins government
retraining benefits — over
Freightliner’s objection
Three days before Christmas 2005,
Freightliner LLC laid off 130 workers
at its Portland truck-making plant. The
company expected workers would get
unemployment benefits for a bit, and
then would be recalled when produc-
tion picked up.
Freightliner didn’t expect that one
of its unions would apply to the gov-
ernment for retraining benefits. But
that’s what one union did. At the advice
of Bob Tackett at Labor’s Community
Service Agency, AFL-CIO, Machinists
District Lodge 24 representative Joe
Kear petitioned the U.S. Department of
Labor to certify that a trade-related lay-
off had occurred.
Kear saw work moving to a Freight-
liner plant in Santiago Tianguistenco
— an industrial park near Mexico City.
And he knew that any U.S. workers
displaced by it have a right to govern-
ment-paid career counseling and re-
training, thanks to a sweetener added
to get members of Congress to approve
the North American Free Trade Agree-
ment (NAFTA).
Usually, companies cooperate with
such requests for worker benefits.
Freightliner, a subsidiary of German-
owned DaimlerChrysler Corp., dis-
agreed with the premise that the layoffs
were trade-related and asked Kear to
withdraw the petition.
Kear kept going. A Labor Depart-
ment investigator sided with the union.
Right now, no Freightliner workers
are actually using the benefits. All of
the laid-off workers were recalled and
are back at work.
But Kear is thinking ahead. Labor
Department certification means the
workers are entitled to benefits for any
layoffs that occur up to two years after-
ward — through April 6, 2008. And
Kear thinks production will drop at the
beginning of 2007. More stringent fed-
eral requirements on vehicle emissions
will take effect then, with the result that
the company’s 2007 truck line will be
more expensive, get lower fuel econ-
omy and require a higher, more expen-
sive grade of diesel.
That means truck buyers are likely
to prefer the 2006 line, and may balk at
the 2007 model.
If layoffs occur at that point, work-
ers would get the retraining benefits
with no delay. It’s no substitute for
keeping a high-paid union manufactur-
ing job, but it’s a pretty generous pack-
age: Job counseling; up to two years’
unemployment insurance benefits; a
health care tax credit that pays two-
thirds the cost of COBRA health insur-
ance; a moving allowance if the worker
needs to relocate to get a job; and up to
$20,000 to pay for school or up to
$10,000 in wage subsidy to employers
willing to do on-the-job training.
Machinists are the largest of four
unions at Freightliner’s Portland plant.
But Teamster drivers, Service Employ-
ees janitors, and Painters and Allied
Trades painters will also be eligible for
benefits if laid off. So will non-union
employees or managers.
For now, the plant is up and running,
with 1,700 union employees turning
out trucks on Swan Island in Portland.
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