Inside
MEETING NO TICES
See
Page 6
V olume 108
Number 1
J anuary 5, 2007
P ortland
Solving the crisis in health care:
2007 looks to be best chance in years at real solution
In Washington, D.C., and in Salem, Ron
Wyden and Ben Westlund gear up to push
versions of universal health care
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
It’s the number one issue for unions at contract bargaining
time: Unceasing growth in the cost of health care insurance is
eating up wage increases and forcing unions to fight hard just to
keep the same level of employer-paid health coverage.
That reality has driven unions to look for a political solution,
with the result that unions have become perhaps the best-organ-
ized lobby for the public at large in its desire for greater access to
health care and a more tolerable cost.
The issue long ago passed crisis proportions: 43 million
Americans were without insurance last year (600,000 in Ore-
gon), and premiums for those who have health insurance have
gone up 87 percent in the last six years, now averaging $956 a
month for family coverage — more than the entire income of a
full-time worker earning the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an
hour.
America’s current health care system is famous for costliness,
inefficiency and inequality. It’s a crisis that calls out for national
solution, but so far Congress has failed to effectively address it,
above all because of the political power of the medical-industrial
complex — the tangle of entrenched economic interests that ben-
efit from the status quo: insurers, hospitals, drug companies, doc-
tors, medical equipment manufacturers and on and on.
Those worst off under the current system, the uninsured,
aren’t organized into any effective lobby. So political support for
a solution is most likely to come from stakeholders like business
and labor.
Health care costs were an estimated $2.2 trillion last year —
about one-sixth the value of everything produced in the United
States. In effect, one-sixth of the economy is holding the other
five-sixths hostage by resisting reform, because the 61 percent of
employers that provide coverage view health care as a business
expense they can’t control.
Nationally and locally, there’s a sense that this could be the
year major reform finally comes. The return of Democrats to the
majority in Congress and the Oregon Legislature has raised the
Oregon labor unions have
ambitious political agenda
Hopes are high among union lob-
byists going into Oregon’s 2007 leg-
islative session, which begins Jan. 8.
With Democrats in control of the gov-
ernor’s office and the Oregon House
and Senate, the strategy has switched
from defense to offense. Union-
backed bills that couldn’t pass in re-
cent years have much better prospects
this year. The labor movement, which
helped elect many lawmakers, now
will ask them to make good on
pledges to support laws that benefit
working people.
Whether they work independently
or as part of several union groupings,
there don’t appear to be any major dis-
agreements among unions about what
to push for.
To get a preview of labor’s legisla-
tive agenda for Oregon this year, the
Northwest Labor Press talked with
leaders and political directors of some
of the state’s most politically active la-
bor organizations. Here are some of
the proposals they’ll be backing.
M AKING I T E ASIER T O U NIONIZE
• Let public employees unionize by
“card check.” Oregon law allows pub-
lic employees to unionize but leaves
one important decision to manage-
ment: Managers can recognize a union
when a majority of workers have
signed union authorization cards, or
they can call for the question to be de-
cided in a union certification election.
Union organizers favor the former,
known as “card check,” because it
makes unionizing easier and less
chancy. Governor Ted Kulongoski or-
dered managers in state agencies to al-
low card check, but his order didn’t
apply to quasi-independent agencies
like the Oregon Lottery or agencies
like the Judiciary which are independ-
ent of the governor. This year, unions
want to settle the question for school
districts and local governments as well
as state agencies.
• Ban “captive audience” anti-
union meetings. Anti-union meetings
are extremely common in company
fights against union campaigns —
(Turn to Page 2)
hopes of health care reformers. Congress is expected to look at
several far-reaching solutions, and the Oregon Legislature is
likely to move ahead with major statewide reforms that could
serve as an incubator for national reforms.
Incoming U.S. Senate Health Committee Chairman Edward
M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and House Commerce Committee Chair-
man John Dingell (D-Mich.) will push a proposal to expand
Medicare to everyone under 65 (Medicare currently makes
health coverage available to everyone 65 and over.) Congress
started Medicare in 1965 as a single direct payer program and
later added a private insurance option that has proved more
costly. The Kennedy-Dingell expansion would return to the origi-
nal model. It would be funded by a 1.7 percent tax on workers’
wages and a 7 percent payroll tax paid by employers.
Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.) also will push a
Medicare-for-all plan, with the difference being that Conyers’ bill
would put private health insurers out of business. Conyers’ pro-
posal, endorsed by more than 200 labor organizations, would be
paid for in part by a modest payroll tax, a small tax on stock and
bond transactions, and increased personal income taxes on the
(Turn to Page 3)
Carpenters haul
in toys for kids
Joe Baron, financial secretary of
Carpenters Local 247, brings a bag
of toys for the Pacific Northwest
Regional Council of Carpenters 8th
annual toy drive. This year the Car-
penters Council gathered 1,685 toys
and $2,531 in cash donations. Car-
penters unions from around Oregon
and Southwest Washington decide
how to distribute the toys within
their own communities. In the
Portland-Vancouver area a
majority of the donations go to the
Portland Fire Bureau’s Toy &
Joymakers. “The Carpenters Union
is one of our major contributors.
They make a big difference and
help tremendously in our efforts,”
said Dean Johnston of the Toy &
Joymakers. Over the past eight
years the Carpenters have donated
more than 8,000 toys and $23,000 in
cash, said Carpenters Council
President Bruce Dennis. “We would
not be able to do this without the
support of all the local unions,
union contractors, contractor
associations, community service
groups and members.”