Health Care & Collective Bargaining: Reform Will Stop Squeeze on Workers’ Pay And Boost Employers

Protecting the health security of CWA members, families and retirees is the critical issue in every round of contract negotiations. The top goal of CWAers in every sector is safeguarding hard-won health care benefits for workers and retirees. That has become increasingly difficult, as employers look to counter non-union competitors that provide little or no health care coverage to workers and health care cost increases outpace all other goods and services.

The innovative programs that CWA negotiated with major employers starting with AT&T in the mid-1980s to control costs while assuring quality care worked, for a while.

But the stresses on our nation's health care system have taken their toll.

"H.R. 3200 requires that employers "pay or play," either cover all workers or pay 8 percent of payroll as the price of not providing health coverage. That's critical for real reform. Without it, our health care system will get worse, not better," said CWA President Larry Cohen.

"Just as important, there must be no taxes on health care plans or on our members. This bad idea will push CWA employers and others to cut benefits. It's disastrous public policy and we'll fight hard to defeat it."

CWA has been successful in the past in blocking employers' efforts to shift health care costs. But the health care system in the United States has changed drastically in recent years. In the last nine years, the cost of health insurance has risen 120 percent while wages grew only 29 percent. Since 2004, employees have seen their cash outlays of health insurance co-pays and deductibles climb by 40 percent. The total insurance and out-of-pocket costs for a typical U.S. family of four increased 7.4 percent in just the last year. (Source: Kaiser Family Foundation and Milliman Inc. Medical Index.)

In every sector, CWA employers and members are subsidizing competitors that provide little or no health care coverage for employees. For example, cable companies like Time Warner and others pay a limited amount toward health care costs for employees. In contrast, AT&T provides comprehensive coverage to employees, spouses and dependents.

In the airline industry, health care benefits for both active and retired flight attendants, passenger service agents and other workers were eliminated or sharply reduced following bankruptcies that hit United, US Airways and other airlines.

At GM and Delphi, thousands of IUE-CWA retirees not eligible for Medicare faced the loss of health benefits following GM's bankruptcy until a new agreement was reached in August that restored some coverage to pre-65 retirees and dependents. Workers in manufacturing, already reeling from a 30 percent drop in employment since 2001, must fight in every round of bargaining to keep health care coverage for active workers and retirees.

In the public sector, CWA state and local workers find their health care, pensions and other benefits targeted by state and local governments seeking to close budget gaps by cutting public workers' pay and compensation. 

"We need health care reform to take this issue off the bargaining table once and for all," said District 4 Vice President Seth Rosen. "Real reform will allow members to maintain quality health care without having to live in fear of it being taken away every round of bargaining," he said.

CWA also has called on employers to work with us in pushing for a health care solution that gets the issue off the bargaining table.