Northwest labor press., January 15, 2010, Page 8, Image 8

Jan. 15, 2010:NWLP
1/12/10
10:23 AM
Page 8
Machinists will oppose health reform bill if it taxes benefits
Obama tries to convince
other union officials to
drop opposition to the tax
WASHINGTON, D.C. —The International As-
sociation of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
(IAM) Executive Council voted unanimously Jan.
11 to oppose any national health care reform bill
that is funded by taxing the value of workers’
health care benefits.
“For decades, Machinists members exchanged
substantial wage increases for the best possible
health insurance,” said IAM President Tom Buf-
fenbarger. “Now, in a bizarre turn of events, their
insurance premiums will be subject to a 40 percent
excise tax if the Senate version of health care re-
form becomes law. Democratic leaders have the
power to stop this travesty and I urge them to do
so, quickly and completely.”
A key provision in the Senate’s version of
health care reform calls for taxing 40 percent of
the value of workers’ health insurance above min-
imums of $8,500 yearly for an individual and
$23,000 for a family.
The House-passed health care revision does not
tax health benefits.
President Barack Obama met with 11 union
leaders Jan. 11 to try to convince them to drop
their opposition to the tax. Buffenbarger was not
among the 11 to attend.
Labor has other problems with the Senate bill,
including its lack of a public option to compete
with the private insurance companies.
National AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka
told the National Press Club prior to meeting with
the president that “instead of taxing the rich, the
Senate bill taxes the middle class.” And it’s “not
just union members’ health care. Most of the 31
million insured employees who would be hit by
the tax are not union members,” he said.
Trumka went even farther. “The Senate bill is
inadequate and does not deserve the support of
working men and women. We aren’t going to ac-
cept a bad bill just to get an agreement.”
The “bad bill” Trumka cited is presumably the
basis for the final version of health care reform.
That’s because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.), had to make many compromises — in-
cluding taxing workers and dumping the public
option — to get the 60 Senate Democratic votes
he needed to halt a GOP filibuster and pass the bill.
Buffenbarger said that no single issue brought
more union members onto last year’s presidental
campaign trail than Republican threats to tax
health care benefits, and the Democrats’ pledge to
protect those benefits.
“Like NAFTA, the health care excise tax is an
issue with the potential to reverberate for years,”
he said.
Sheet Metal training center gets piece of $5 million ARRA grant
Sheet Metal Workers HVAC & Met-
als Institute will get $150,000 over two
years to train workers in green jobs in-
dustries.
The money is part of a $5 million
American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act (ARRA) jobs stimulus grant
awarded to Oregon Manufacturing Ex-
tension Partnership (OMEP) by the
U.S. Department of Labor’s Employ-
ment and Training Administration.
Sheet Metal Workers Local 16, Ma-
chinists District Lodge 24, and the
Northwest Oregon Labor Council were
PAGE 8
spotlighted as “key partners” in the
grant award. Only Sheet Metal Workers
is benefiting financially.
“Our goal in all this is to take our
existing workforce and make it sustain-
able,” said Dennis Boyd, training coor-
dinator for the Sheet Metal Training
Center. “We want to sustain the work-
force as well as the environment.”
Boyd said that if the training center
can offer a program “that helps make
our people more employable, that’s
what we’ll do.”
Local 16 is currently experiencing
25 percent unemployment among its
2,150 members. It has 150 apprentices
in training.
Bob Petroff, directing business rep-
resentative of Machinists District
Lodge 24, is hopeful that some of the
money will be used to introduce ap-
prenticeship training programs at
unionized companies such as Beaver-
ton-based Integrated Power Services,
where 11 employees are members of
Local Lodge 63.
Over 37 companies have expressed
interest in participating in the program,
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
and have projected 775 new jobs over
the next two years. Interested compa-
nies include SolarWorld, Renewable
Energy Composite Systems, Miles
Fiberglass, SANYO, and GK Machine.
The grant award specifies that
money is to be used to train and place
unemployed and dislocated workers —
with a focus on veterans, women, and
minorities — in Multnomah, Washing-
ton, Clackamas, Marion, Polk, and
Yamhill counties in Oregon, and Clark,
Cowlitz, and Wahkiakum counties in
Washington state in careers such as hy-
brid/electric auto technicians, weather-
ization specialists, wind and energy au-
ditors, and solar panel installers.
OMEP will conduct an analysis of
the skills and production requirements
of the renewable energy industry and
identify those manufacturers deemed to
be good candidates for employee train-
ing to develop and/or manufacture new
product lines to support the industry.
The grant is projected to preserve or
create 1,700 jobs in the nine counties,
with as many as 1,325 participants
earning certificates or degrees.
JANUARY 15, 2010