viewpoint/opinion
BY MARCUS WIDENOR
Health Care vs. Wages
Don’t blame public employee unions for impasse
B
ruce Mackey’s letter (7/23) on public
employee unions and health care
reform resorts to the kind of political
misdirection that typifi es the current
debate.
He’s got the fi rst part right. The pols,
including Dems, are in the tank with the
industry. And he seems to support a single
payer system — something I do, too. Then
he tells us that public employee unions
are the villains in the current situation.
Anyone who bothers to check will see that
the four largest public employees unions in the
country, SEIU, AFSCME, AFT and NEA — all of whom have
considerable membership in Oregon — are endorsers of single payer health
care options.
The strategic question for labor has been how to get to a single payer
system without seriously damaging the hard-won level of worker health
benefi ts.
Anyone who has been a union member at some time over the last
15 years knows that health care is the elephant in the room during
negotiations. Unions and their members (through democratic processes
I might add) have often decided to trade the size of wage increases to
maintain existing health care benefi ts. The employers says, “That’s all
there is. Put it in wages, or keep the current health care coverage” (Or
more likely, “Put it in wages, or take an even larger cut in the health care
coverage”). This has not been an easy decision for workers to make. It
involves shared sacrifi ce on the part of union members, some of whom
don’t need the health care benefi ts as much as they could use a wage
increase.
The real question here is why a single group of workers should be
penalized because they decided to sacrifi ce wage increases for health care
benefi ts for themselves and their families. Many union members with the
so-called “Cadillac” plans are not actually highly paid workers. Taxing their
health care benefi ts is not a more progressive way to raise revenues for an
alternative system if it decreases the living standards of low-middle income
workers disproportionately.
Anyone (including President Obama) who believes that health care
reform is not at some level a distributional exercise is going to be sadly
disappointed by the reform process. Health care standards will continue to
erode (including in union plans) until we stop treating it as a commodity.
That is what the single payer initiative is about. In addition, we will all have
to pay for the transition. Employers who haven’t been providing benefi ts
should be the fi rst to ante up, but higher paid workers will have to as well.
However, it shouldn’t be based on the marketplace “cost” of each person’s
health insurance package. Instead it should be derived from some broader,
progressive measurement of an individual’s ability to pay — means testing
of overall income, benefi ts, and assets.
Unions want single payer not just because it is more equitable, but
because it takes health care off the bargaining table, where it has been
corrupting the process for two decades. That would allow unions to get
back to what they are supposed to do — raise the working and living
standards of American workers. Real wages have been stagnant since the
late 1970s, and part of the reason is the huge cost of employer paid health
insurance.
Blaming the current bottleneck on health care reform on public
employees unions only muddies the waters about who is in favor of reform,
and who stands in the way of it.
Marcus Widenor lives in Eugene and is an associate professor at the UO Labor Education and Research
Center, www.uoregon.edu/~lerc
4 AUGUST 6, 2009
EUGENE WEEKLY
letters
TO THE EDITOR
MOVING ON?
On the face of it, your criticisms (news,
7/30) of the (now confi rmed) decision by the
City Council to relocate the Eugene Police
Department north of the Willamette seem
self-evident and compelling. However, if
this is so, why did the mayor and others
who have spoken out so often against
sprawl, downtown decay, etc., mount this
bandwagon with such enthusiasm?
It would be interesting to know
what Jim Torrey and other ostensibly
“conservative” opinion leaders say on
the subject — or if there are irrefutable
environmental, social, economic or even
political considerations that justify this
apparent rush to put yet another nail in the
“Central” Eugene coffi n.
Sadly, Eugene, like so many other places,
seems to lack effective “solution makers”
who are able to craft and implement really
constructive, inclusionary visions for the
community.
Peter Wengert
Taos, New Mexico
(formerly Eugene)
stakeholder dialogue is not possible under
the Air Pollution Discharge Permit process
that LRAPA is currently undertaking.
Our community needs a way to bring up
issues such as air pollution monitoring,
low-income home weatherization, public
health surveys and reducing air pollution.
The application submitted by Seneca
states that the plant will emit nearly 500
tons of air pollutants and toxins per year.
Many of these pollutants are known to
cause cancer, heart disease and respiratory
illness. The neighborhoods downwind of
the plant, including Bethel, River Road
and Trainsong, will bear a disproportional
impact to their health and wellbeing.
OTA urges the community, particularly
people living in west Eugene, to write a
letter or email to your city and county
representatives and LRAPA. Tell them
that it is important to protect public health
and be a willing participant in discussions
about environmental health facilitated by
the EPA. The deadline is Aug. 14.
Lisa Arkin, Executive Director
Oregon Toxics Alliance
Eugene
TIME TO SPEAK OUT
In early June, Oregon Toxics Alliance
published a short report on the health
burden of the proposed Seneca Sawmill
biomass co-generation facility (see
www.oregontoxics.org). We presented
these concerns to staff members of the
U.S. Environmental Justice Agency, the
Oregon Department of Energy, Mayor
Piercy and Councilor Andrea Ortiz, Lane
Regional Air Pollution Agency (LRAPA),
consultants, the manager for the Seneca
power plant and members of impacted
neighborhoods in West Eugene.
The federal EPA has expressed a
fi rm interest in helping residents of west
Eugene convene a stakeholder process to
address the negative health threats from
the air pollution caused by the plant. The
facilitated discussion will allow for open
dialogue about making a better plan to
mitigate and address air quality issues in
Lane County. This type of community
THE PUBIC HAIR DID IT
Regarding Eve Cienfuegos’ letter
(7/16) on the Oregon Country Fair: I went
to three fairs in the 1980s. I stopped when
a friend found a pubic hair on his black
bean tostada. A bit traumatic.
The fair is the same crap every year:
hippies, hippie wannabes, bad music,
overpriced crafts, doubtful hygiene and
lots of dust.
Like the pretentious Springfi eld Boiler
Festival (now extinct), the Bohemia
Mining Days, the Eugene Celebration, it’s
phony crap.
I was teened and weened on the ’60s
and ’70s, It was shit then and still is.
Greg Hume
Creswell
HOLDING GOLD OK
Roy Keene is wrong when he states: “It
is still illegal for private citizens to own
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