SEIU Pres Stern Helping Out Schwarzenegger-Whats Next?

Gov.'s Healthcare Summit Reveals Union Divisions
As some organizations picket the talks at UCLA, others thank Schwarzenegger for convening the session on funding medical coverage.
By Joe Mathews, Times Staff Writer
July 25, 2006

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger brought together corporate executives, doctors, medical administrators and academics Monday in what he said was an attempt to find common ground on healthcare policy — and in the process exposed a divide among organized labor.

The divide was apparent in the differing tones inside UCLA's air-conditioned Covel Commons, where Schwarzenegger held his "Summit on Health Care Affordability," and outside in the sweltering courtyard.

Outside, the California Nurses Assn. ran a picket line of 40 people. "Any union leader that crosses is a scab," said Rose Ann DeMoro, the union's executive director.

The head of the California Labor Federation, Art Pulaski, recalled last year's fight with Schwarzenegger over his special election and denounced the governor for not doing more to provide health coverage to Californians.

Inside, the national presidents of three prominent unions — the Service Employees International Union, the United Farm Workers and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America — took seats around a long table with the 50 summit participants, and thanked the governor for convening the session.

(Don Attore, a top staffer of the California Teachers Assn., joined the summit late and spoke during a lunchtime discussion about Schwarzenegger's proposal, announced Monday, to install new medical clinics in as many as 500 elementary schools.)

The service employees, farm workers and teachers unions have endorsed Schwarzenegger's opponent, Phil Angelides, who held a healthcare session of his own at UCLA's Kerckhoff Hall.

"No governor in recent California history has cared less about healthcare or done less to expand and improve it than Arnold Schwarzenegger," Angelides told the gathering.

Angelides said if elected he would introduce legislation requiring companies with more than 200 employees to provide health insurance. It would, he said, be modeled after a law that California voters overturned in 2004, which required companies to offer insurance or pay fees into a state system that would provide coverage.

In addition, Angelides said he would "force" drug companies to lower their costs and require HMOs to devote more money to healthcare and "not excessive profits and executive pay." The governor's campaign said such measures would amount to a multibillion-dollar tax increase on business.

The labor officials said they went to Schwarzenegger's event because of the urgency of the issue, and not to help him politically.

Arturo Rodriguez, the UFW president, noted that 85% of farm workers lack health coverage. "People's lives are more important than what the election politics are," he said.

The divergent opinions reflect a recent split in the American labor movement. While the unions protesting generally side with the AFL-CIO, the three unions whose presidents were inside the Schwarzenegger summit are part of the Change to Win coalition. Change to Win severed ties with the AFL-CIO last year to place greater emphasis on organizing new members.

Andy Stern, the service employees president, said late last week that he saw no contradiction between his union's strong support for Angelides' gubernatorial campaign and his participation in the Schwarzenegger summit.

He said the governor should set a deadline for making changes to healthcare and require companies to provide health coverage to employees if they want to do business with the state. Stern, repeating a statement that has been controversial within the labor movement, said that the "employer-based" system of healthcare is dying and should be replaced with universal coverage.

Schwarzenegger paid close attention to his union guests. Stern was seated next to the governor at lunch, and other union leaders were close by.

DeMoro, the executive director of the nurses' union, which voted last year to join the AFL-CIO, said union leaders who participated in the summit were betraying their labor brethren.

"It's really shocking frankly, because working people have been hit the hardest by the governor's healthcare policy," she said. "It says the right wing has been extremely effective in dividing the labor movement."

Doug McCarron, the carpenters union president, called the criticism "ridiculous. I want to see bipartisan programs and solutions for American workers."

Schwarzenegger himself has offered few detailed proposals on healthcare during his nearly three years in elective politics. The governor said Monday he was open to all ideas and ready to begin a thorough examination of healthcare with an eye toward announcing a comprehensive proposal next year if he is reelected.

"I look at this as the first mile of a marathon run," Schwarzenegger said of the summit.

The discussion covered familiar territory in the national healthcare debate, with the participants offering various reasons for high health costs and the rising number of uninsured Californians — now estimated at more than 6 million.

There was little mention of administrative and prescription drug costs, often blamed as reasons for rising healthcare costs. Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group that has been critical of the governor's record on healthcare, told the summit that he found the entire discussion "surreal."

*

Times staff writer Robert Salladay contributed to this report.

Wall Street Journal Opinion Monday July 17, 2006

Horse-and-Buggy Health Coverage

By Andy Stern

There is no subject that gets more discussion, analysis and lament than healthcare in America. Enough already. It’s time to assert one simple fact: The employer-based system of health coverage is over. This may sound shocking, coming from a union leader whose members bargain constantly with employers for health-care benefits. But the system is collapsing, crushed by out-of-control costs, a revolutionary global economy and masses of uninsured.

CEOs know this best: They dread the meeting with the HR managers who tell them, once again, that their health-care costs are through the roof. So they look for any way to control costs. Co-pays go up, subsidies go down, coverage is dropped all together. In the last five year alone, the percentage of businesses offering health benefits has plummeted to 60% from 69%. Here’s how bad it will continue to get: McKinsey & Company projects that by 2008, the average Fortune 500 company will spend as much on healthcare as they make in profit. How can we possibly compete in the global economy with that kind of burden?

I understand why CEOs are afraid of health-care costs. What I don’t understand is why they are so timid about doing something about them. These are the people who revolutionized medicine, communication, technology, entertainment and investing. And yet when it comes to addressing the biggest economic issue their companies and their country face, they resort to bookkeeping. Where are the visionaries? The tough minded magnates who make billions for shareholders? Stuck in the 20th century, that’s where.

To fix health care in America, we have to accept that we’re living through the most profound transformative econmomic revolution in the history of the world. It’s happening so fast we can barely keep track of it. Intense global competition. Contingent worker. The explosive economies of China and India. Technology in the workplace. Outsourcing. By the time they are 35, young people entering the job market today will already have worked eight to 12 jobs. Employers will be pit stops for them, not permanent homes. In other words, we are rapidly moving from empoyer-managed work lives to self-managed work lives, in which workers must figure out on their own how to maintain things like health insurance and retirement.

A new national policy framework is the easy part. There seems to be broad consensus that we need a universal system that provides affordable coverage, choice of doctors and insurance plans, core benefits, and shared financing among employers, employees and government. There are a couple of thousand position papers out there to choose from. The problem isn’t the policy. It’s leadership. And I don’t mean Washington, D.C. The political class in both parties is full of words and bereft of action. They are not going to provide the answers until they are forced to. That force must come from the business community.
Today I sent a letter to every CEO in the Fortune 500 asking them to make health care their national priority. I urge corporate leaders to come forward. Our union members-your employees will work with you. The old idea that business and labor can’t work together for the common good is as outdated as lifetime jobs. The Service Employees International Union is the largest health-care union in the country. Our membership includes nearly one million nurses, doctors, hospital staff, nursing home and home care workers. We know health care. You know business. Together let’s build a new 21st-century American economy.

Mr. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, is author of "A Country That Works" forthcoming from the Free Press.


Educational Forum & Video
Which Way For The SEIU
&
The Future Of Change To Win

Presentation Of Video On CTW Organizing Convention &
60 Min On SEIU Pres Andy Stern

Saturday August 5, 2006 3:00 PM
New College Theater
777 Valencia St/19th St. San Francisco, CA

$3.00 donation requested

One year ago, unions representing over 6 million workers broke from the AFL-CIO and launched a new federation called Change To Win (CTW). The SEIU which has 1.8 million members was a key force in the launching of this new federation. This forum will look at what CTW has done in the one year it has been launched and what direction the SEIU and other unions in the Change To Win Coalition are moving towards.
Speakers from the SEIU and other unions will participate and discussion will take place on the merging of hundreds of thousands of SEIU members into 4 regional locals in California.
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Oct2004/johnson1004.html
http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2006-06-28/news/smith_2.html

Sponsored by
Labor Video Project
P.O. Box 720027 San Francisco, CA 94172
lvpsf [at] labornet.org (415)282-1908
Endorsed by Labor Action Coalition (LAC), New College of California For Education and Social Action