Bosses Shiftng Health Care Costs on to Backs of Workers

Bosses Shiftng Health Care Costs on to Backs of Workers

Rank and File Opposition Kept in Check by Union Leadership

Health benefits are becoming a contentious issue in union contracts as employers shift the increasing cost of providing these benefits on to the backs of their employees by raising co-pays, deductibles and monthly premiums. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Americans average annual out of pocket expenses for health care rose 26% between 1995 and 2001. Workers average monthly contribution to premiums for family coverage tripled between 1988 and 2002 and co-pays for brand name drugs that have generic equivalents rose 62% in 2002. (1)

Initially, many rank and file union members were willing to accept what they saw as relatively minor increases in benefit costs. But as the Wall Street Journal reported, drugs that used to require co-pays of $5 and $10 just a few years ago are now costing as much as $40 with family coverage premiums accounting for 20% of a persons salary in some cases.

For many older people and low waged workers these drugs are not simply headache cures but life saving medicines. There are 4.5 million seniors in Medicare managed-care plans and they have been hit hard by impositions of hospital admissions co-pays and annual drug caps.

Some unionized workers are fighting back, San Francisco janitors voted to strike over the issue before their leaders cut a slightly less offensive deal with millionaire corporate politician Willie Brown, Mayor of San Francisco. This was to be expected as the leadership of organized labor has done nothing to organize a generalized resistance to this subsidizing of health industry profits by working people; after all, in the last analysis the employers rights come first.

This assault on health care cannot be separated from the general offensive of big business against working people at home and abroad. Services are being cut, education slashed, taxes increased. The arts, the environment, public transport, it is all on the chopping block as the crisis of the system is passed from big business to the workers and middle class. In city after city, workers are being asked to take pay and benefit cuts by the employers as $4bn a month is spent occupying Iraq alone. Union leaders go along with this as we have to be "realistic". Where the rank and file resist, then some temporary deal may be made by the union leadership to head off a revolt, smaller cuts are accepted by a reluctant rank and file in the absence of a fighting alternative.

How many times have we heard from big business politicians and trade union leaders that we all have to "share the pain"? They all cry crocodile tears as workers living standards are eroded. The system can't afford it, the employers' claim and the union leaders concur. This miserable argument, what amounts to class collaboration actually, is not limited to the U.S. Globally, workers' leaders, trapped by their own view of the world, their worship of the market, defend the system's brutal attack on the working classes. Gerhard Schroeder, Germany's Chancellor and leader of what was once a workers party, the SDP, makes it quite clear, "we're going to have to bid farewell to some of the things we love that are too expensive" he says. (2) He is talking here of health care, leisure time, work rules, vacations etc. naturally, the "we" he refers to are working people, not himself and his political cronies or the German capitalist class.

The acceptance by the trade union leaders of the employers' world view, in short, their social system based on profit, makes it very difficult for the average worker to see a way out. Consequently, the idea that the system cannot afford a decent standard of living and that even the one we have must be scaled back, gets an ear. Even if it doesn't, there's nothing we can do.

The best sources to discredit this argument are found in the journals of capitalism; Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times. Business Week recently had an article about a new cholesterol drug that an FDA panel had recommended approving. Cholesterol drugs are called statins. The new drug, Crestor, will be a competitor of the two other main cholesterol drugs, Lipitor and Zocor. Drugs are a great moneymaker for the huge pharmaceutical companies. Lipitor and Zocor accounted for $12.5 billion in sales in 2002 and this was just in the U.S. Business Week, speaking freely in a magazine that is not for mass consumption, informs us that statins "have become a veritable license to print money". (3) The drug companies, nothing but legalized dope pushers really, spend billions pushing their wares. In 2002, $1.4 billion was spent pushing Lipitor and Zocor through ads in doctors offices the media, etc. Next time you' re in the doctors office take the time to look at the pen they give you to sign in or the calendar on the wall.

So here we have this $1.4 billion pushing these two drugs in 2002. These are only two of many drugs that are pushed in this way. The actual figures are staggering. But in most cases cholesterol is simply a matter of bad eating habits, like fast food joints. Consider on top of this $1.4 billion how much McDonald's, Burger King and the fast food industry spends per year advertising the causes of high cholesterol, their food, mostly to small children. The money is well spent. In 1970, Americans spent about $6bn on fast food; in two thousand we spent more than $110 billion. Americans spend more money on fast food than we do on education or new cars and the damage to our health is dramatic. (4)

So big business convinces us to eat this garbage. Meanwhile, they force longer working hours on us reducing leisure time making fast food dives more necessary as food preparation takes time. Billions more of our wealth is stolen by the drug companies in the form of profits and taxes to develop drugs to sell back to us to treat the negative and life threatening effects of the food they convince us to eat. The health costs in the form of hospital stays or doctors visits that are artificially caused by this situation are born by us, the victims, in the form of medical insurance or taxes. The waste and theft in the health industry is staggering. These figures alone are the justification for an offensive of labor against capital. We must reject the bosses and union leaders definition of what is realistic and what is not. This method of social health care and mass food consumption is what is unrealistic and it is our obligation to change it; our health depends on it.

When we take time to think of these things, or at least when the figures showing the massive wealth in society are laid before us, we know in our gut that we are being ripped off, that the money is there. But changing this situation seems almost impossible. This sense of helplessness is strengthened by the absence of any offensive on the part of organized labor, the force that can confront this offensive of capital against workers and the poor. In this country very few of us are organized, about 12% or 14%, mainly in the public sector. Despite the low percentage of the workforce organized it is still a crucial sector and has the ability to stop the economy from functioning.

Organized labor will play a crucial role as the movement against global capitalism grows. It is the role of the heads of organized labor that has prevented this from occurring up to now. After Seattle, more care was taken by the AFL-CIO leadership to keep the rank and file union member from the unruly influence of the youth, whose boldness, audacity and willingness to take on the bosses was a beacon to many union activists. The rank and file of organized labor will not be permanently contained. By building links with genuine opposition movements within the unions, activists in the anti-capitalist movement can help speed up this process and a more secure and healthy future will become a much more realistic scenario.

Richard Mellor
Member AFSCME Local 444
Oakland CA
8-10-03

(1) With Medical Costs Climbing, Workers Are Asked to pay More
Wall Street Journal 6-16-03
(2) Overhaul of Labor Plans Clear Hurdle. San Francisco Chronicle 6-2-03
(3)A Bare-Knuckle Battle Over Cholesterol Drugs Business Week 7-21-03
(4) Eric Schlosser, Fast Food nation