JournalInquirer.com

Health insurance and reform: a marriage made in heaven?
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, September 24, 2009 12:08 PM EDT

I do.

You can count on hearing couples at wedding ceremonies say those two simple words.

Those same couples are less likely to repeat those words when asked if they have a health plan that takes care of them when they’re sick — or if they even have a health plan at all.

A relatively nondescript census report released last week described the status of health-care coverage for America’s families. The number of people without health insurance grew to 46.3 million in 2008, up a mere 600,000 from the year before. Here in Connecticut 17,000 newly uninsured were added to the rolls, bringing us to a total of 343,000 — 44,000 of whom are children.

Census data also shows a scary trend of fewer people getting health insurance from private coverage or employer-based coverage, as the number of people covered by private health insurance decreased by a million in 2008.

As those numbers keep ticking up it won’t be long before it’s your turn to sacrifice your health or life savings at the altar of the health-insurance gods. And all the fighting, political posturing, and delay geared to protect the wealth of big pharmaceutical and health company CEOs and investors is producing more polarization than solutions.

We really need a plan fast before it’s too late. So, who has one?

I do.

I’m a justice of the peace and I asked a few of my peers if they have run across couples who have become more motivated to get married for a health plan. While no one performed a ceremony for couples who exercised their “I do’s” solely for coverage, there are instances when people changed their life plans and marriage timing because a future spouse became uncovered through job loss, a canceled plan, or unaffordable premiums. Some found out they were suddenly on the parent track before the wedding track and the quickest path to coverage was down the aisle.

Younger workers statistically have less health care and are waiting longer to marry. Well, skip the government option and get on with the nuptials. We have 46 million uninsured and a couple hundred million with health plans — should be a bunch of matches made in health-care heaven.

Need an insurance plan? Marry your old college roommate or high school flame. Think of the economic boost with startups for health plan dating services — healthbeau.com or matecoverage.biz. Don’t do it for love. Do it for a plan.

More covered lives. More happy parents (and JPs). And it will boost the economy. It’s all there.

Well, maybe not.

There just might be a few too many bad moral and ethical consequences. But so is hanging those 46 million uninsured Americans — along with the 14,000 who join them every day — out to dry while we fight over who should win or lose in the big money health game.

Of course, it’s not a good plan, but right up there with co-ops, starting over, or deregulating the health care free market.

What’s left? Right now we live in a system that is owned and operated by an insurance monopoly that labels costs for your care as “medical losses.” Death panels and rationed care — courtesy of the insurance cartel that raises prices at will, or reduces, denies, or cancels coverage — are part of the bad system we need to toss.

It’s a sad day in America when options to protect health, family, and life run out, as is the case for increasing numbers of health-care victims. If we can agree that marriage without commitment is doomed to failure, both practically and morally, then we also should agree that spending our families into bankruptcy for insurance coverage that fails us is equally doomed to moral and practical failure.

Who wants couples to get married for the right reasons and live happily ever after? Who wants to see them protected by an economical health-care system that saves lives, is affordable with good options and choices, embraces prevention, covers medical care when needed, and doesn’t bankrupt wedded bliss or future families (Obama’s plan)?

When you think about it, you probably do.

I do.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor

JournalInquirer.com
Young workers feel the pinch, but have vision for future
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, September 17, 2009 12:08 PM EDT
America used to be the land of a brighter future. That may still hold true for those at the top, but a growing population is expressing doubt about their possibilities — those in our workforce who are younger than 35.
In 1999 more than 77 percent of these young workers felt hopeful and confident that over their next five years on the job they would achieve economic and financial goals. The same demographic today dropped 22 points on the hopeful scale. Only 20 percent of that workforce had worries about their prospects 10 years ago. Now, their future is a troubling concern for 41 percent of the group.
That should be a cause of concern for all of us. What will America be like if its youth gives up?
These results come from a Peter D. Hart Research poll initiated by the AFL-CIO and its community affiliate, Working America. Among the findings:
• Young workers are having trouble getting ahead financially.• They are significantly less
covered by health insurance or retirement plans.• Most are earning less than $30,000 a year.
• The majority, 58 percent, don’t have enough savings to pay bills for more than 2 months.
Consequently they are deferring further education, starting families later, and 35 percent of them live at home.
Our nation has been through many waves of worry and discontent. Most of what sparked organized labor’s initiatives to push for better wages, hours, and working conditions arose from the initiative of those who were ready to fight for an opportunity for a better future.The poll showed signs of hope though. Young workers have a clear vision for reinvigorating the economy with job creation. Health care and education are top issues for our future leaders. And, they are highly skeptical of corporate America and blame greedy Wall Street, banks, and corporate CEOs for their stress.
Right now, as everyone is stressed by the economy and asking what the future holds, the national AFL-CIO is ending its convention in Pittsburgh. Unions representing more than 11 million workers mapped an economic recovery strategy that puts people back to work, creates good-paying jobs, guarantees health care, and invests in infrastructure to rebuild programs that have been laid to waste as a consequence of the biggest money grab and subsequent economic failure since the Great Depression.
A key part of the agenda includes boosting union membership. The Employee Free Choice Act will guarantee an employee’s right to choose whether or not to be in a union without being intimidated or harassed by pressure or threats from the boss.Most Americans are in a union — or would like to be in one, if they could. Obviously the unionized group is smaller now, but the people who want a union have a good clue about how much better their middle-class lives would be with a union contract. They have figured out, just like worried young workers, that trusting the boss with your economic future is not the wisest move.
Union workers are: 52 percent more likely to have job-provided health care; almost three times more likely to have recession-proof defined benefit pensions; 50 percent more likely to have paid personal time off and average about 15 days of paid vacation per year than the nonunion workforce. Pay is better for everyone, and women and minorities are less disadvantaged when a fair, inclusive, and responsive collective-bargaining process sets the standardsAll these things used to be in the American dream but are now fading recollections and what younger workers can only wish for.
More people are beginning to see the wisdom in advancing a system where the middle class is rebuilt with unions playing a key role in creating a more secure economic future.AFL-CIO unions are mapping the plan to organize around important social and economic issues. Young workers are becoming engaged in labor, community, and political organizations to move an agenda for a better future.
President Barack Obama, when he addressed the AFL-CIO, said, “When hardworking Americans succeed — that’s when organized labor succeeds. And when organized labor succeeds — that’s when our middle class succeeds. And when our middle class succeeds — that’s when the United States of America succeeds.”
They all get it. All that’s left is to get it done.

Leo Canty a labor and political activist who lives in Windsor.

JournalInquirer.com
When it is time to strike
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Friday, September 11, 2009 11:38 AM EDT

Having a job and a paycheck is pretty important to most people – especially now. With unemployment numbers rising and opportunities for better jobs declining most people just seem to be hunkering down and riding out the storm. Count your blessings if you have a job even if it’s wearing you out, or you hate the boss or your wages or benefits are being cut. Just suck it up and think about the alternatives. How would you support the house, the car and the kids? What about health insurance, or the pension plan, if you have one? No job means scary times and destroyed lives so leaving or losing a job is serious business.

So why on earth would anyone put his job on the line? Ask Jennifer Briscoe. She’s on strike at the South Windsor Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, and out of a job, for now, along with many of her co- workers at the center. They have opted to put their jobs, and their paychecks and families on the line because they decided that sucking it up was much worse than taking action and fighting for fairness.

Unlike most workers, they have that choice to fight back if they choose to. They have a union — Teamsters local 671.This union and its members are no strangers to standing up for fairness and equity when it comes to fighting for working families. They know that in times like these workers are most at risk to lose hard fought gains in wages, benefits and other job protections. More than ever, everyone’s wages and benefits are at risk. For unionized workers bargaining for a contract to stem the tide of take backs is more challenging than ever.

The workers, many of whom have worked there for many years, have lived through rough times in the nursing home industry and changes of ownership. The Center used to be part of the Haven Health Care chain, and was sold to Connecticut Health Facilities Inc., after Haven spiraled into bankruptcy last year. The new company promised to uphold the union agreements and did, until the contracts expired and everything was up for negotiations.

Briscoe and many of her co-workers average around $14-15 an hour caring for the clients at the nursing home. Their now-expired contract included health insurance a modest pension plan and other fair and reasonable items that union contracts normally include. The problem is, the union members definition of fair is different from the owners who have for instance proposed a 300 percent increase, for some more than $50 a week increase, in health insurance premiums and changes in the pension plan that the workers negotiated in their last contract. The company offered raises as part of the deal but the members know that the total puts them in the race for the bottom as the raises would not make up for the net loss on the deal. They would be working harder and longer for so much less and they decided they couldn’t just suck it up so they went on strike.

Employer retrenchment on wages and benefits is all too common, and according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data the impact is hitting especially hard on women and people of color in lower wage environments, coincidentally the same demographic as the South Windsor Center. And it’s taking a toll on those struggling most to make ends meet. Many of the workers are just one step beyond the need for public assistance programs and don’t want to use the programs but they may need to if smaller paychecks diminish their ability to pay the bills.

These workers are in a fight. It is one that they don’t want but feel they must make. They have decided it’s worse to accept the employer’s deal than to stand up and fight it – no matter the outcome. They have truly demonstrated their resolve to push for real economic justice at work.

Leo Canty a labor and political activist who lives in Windsor.

JournalInquirer.com

A day to commemorate labor spirit
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 12:09 PM EDT

Here’s a fun fact for the coming Labor Day weekend: America was started in a union hall.

The ancestors of the modern day carpenters union, all of whom belonged to a local Philadelphia guild called the Carpenters’ Company, finished construction of Carpenters’ Hall in 1774. It was a finely crafted and impressive building, constructed by talented, organized, and skilled trades people who fully understood the value and power of working together to help each other prosper and care for family.

Carpenters guild members toiled like everyone else as King George and the British profiteers were putting the squeeze on colonists at the dawn of the American Revolution. Leaders of the colonies needed a meeting to share their discontent and develop a plan to stop the oppression. The call went out for the First Continental Congress; delegates chose Carpenters’ Hall for what would be the historic gathering, where delegates passed a series of resolutions letting the king and Parliament know they could not trample on the colonists’ rights and put the eventual Revolution in play.

How fitting, then, that the flame that ignited the fire in pursuit of social and economic justice for a nation was lit in a union hall.

A century later, the carpenters and other unions in Philadelphia and other cities were building their own modern-day framework for economic justice and social progress. Part of that framework included a vision to launch a special day of recognition for the toils and achievements of ordinary working people. America had made great strides economically since the Revolution, and the beginning forces of organized labor sought to ensure that due recognition was given to America’s workers.Carpenters union leader Peter McGuire from Philadelphia and Matthew Maguire, a machinist who led the New York City Central Labor Union, are credited with launching the concept of a national observance of Labor Day. The official recorded event took place Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, when some 20,000 working people marched to demand an eight-hour workday and other labor law reforms.

The idea caught on and marches, celebrations, and other observances began to spread to other states as workers fought to win higher wages, workplace rights, and better working conditions at a time when there were no laws to support them.

In 1893, as unions began to gain more power and recognition, New York City workers took an unpaid day off and marched around Union Square in support of a national Labor Day, drawing attention to organized efforts to improve wages and workers rights.A year later, 12,000 federal troops were called into Pullman, Ill., to break up a huge strike against the greedy Pullman railway company.Frustrated, angry workers resisted and the situation ended with two workers shot and killed by U.S. deputy marshals.

In what most historians call an election-year attempt to appease workers after the federal crackdown, six days after the strike was broken President Grover Cleveland signed legislation making the first Monday in September a federal holiday, Labor Day. Cleveland lost the election, but many states went ahead and affirmed the holiday in their law books. Connecticut’s law passed in 1889.

Beyond the institution of the holiday, labor has played a significant role as one of the leading catalysts for change this nation has ever seen. Major social and economic changes — ending child labor, a 40-hour week, weekends and paid holidays, pensions, health care, sick and vacation time, safe workplaces — are benefits everyone takes for granted and gets to enjoy.None of these benefits was achieved without a fight. Many struggles and sacrifices were made — and lives given — to provide fair and just rewards in exchange for one’s work.

Today’s unions know — just as those in the Carpenters’ Company did — that at times it’s as difficult to hold on to a good standard of living as it is to improve upon it. But that’s never been a reason to stop trying.The spirit of unity and purpose, and the desire to change things for the better, that suffused Carpenters’ Hall in 1774 is alive and well in today’s union halls — and we all get to feel it at picnics and parades on Monday.

Happy Labor Day.

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.