A Health Care Dinosaur | Verizon employees hope to hold on to 100 percent employer-paid medical insurance
On May 22, Verizon workers and their supporters gathered at company offices across Massachusetts and Rhode Island to call for the continuation of something most workers gave up on a long time ago: free health insurance.
The workers are now in negotiations with the telecom giant, and one of the issues they say is most contentious is keeping 100 percent employer-paid health insurance.
A Dying Breed
The employees rallying in front of Verizon's Boylston office said it's the same issue that provoked a major strike nearly 20 years ago, back when their employer was called New England Telephone.
"It's something we fought for and won, and we don't want to give it back," said one Verizon employee who said he took part in the 1989 strike.
The workers are fully aware that they are taking a stand on a benefit very few Americans get. The flyers they handed out at the rally noted that only 6 percent of Americans get fully paid family health care from their employers and only 20 percent get fully paid single coverage.
In fact, the rally was actually something different than the typical effort to drum up support for a difficult round of negotiations. Advertised as a "Health Care Action Day," it was sponsored not just by the unions that represent Verizon workers but also by the left-leaning labor organization Jobs With Justice and MassCare, an organization devoted to pushing for a universal, single-payer health care system.
Former Green Party gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross joined the workers, representing Jobs With Justice. She acknowledged that paying 100 percent of health care premiums can be hard on businesses, and she said that's exactly why employers should support a single-payer system, similar to the Canadian government-funded system.
"This is a crisis for the business community," she said. "Well then, handle it as a community."
That's not as outrageous a suggestion as it may seem. In 2002, the leaders of the Canadian divisions of GM, DaimlerChrysler and Ford Motor Co. joined the president of the Canadian Auto Workers union in signing a letter calling for the preservation and expansion of the Canadian government-financed health system. The statement said that the system "accounts for a significant portion of Canada's overall labour cost advantage in auto assembly, versus the U.S., which in turn has been a significant factor in maintaining and attracting new auto investment to Canada."
Then, in 2003, Ford Motor Co. chairman William Clay Ford Jr. made public statements worrying about the costs of U.S. health care, noting that the U.S. is the only major industrialized country with an employer-based health care system and calling for a national solution.
The problem is, employers like the automakers and Verizon are paying employee premiums that are inflated by the high administrative costs of the American system, and then they're paying again through their taxes to subsidize programs like MassHealth that the employees of less generous companies rely on.
Of course, in real life, the U.S. system is not likely to change soon. The new Massachusetts effort to provide "universal" coverage may be the most radical health insurance experiment going on in the U.S. right now, but it doesn't change anything fundamental about the way most employers and employees absorb the costs of coverage.
And those costs are significant. According to the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, the average employee who gets individual insurance through his job pays $114 a month while his employer picks up another $320. For family plans, the average split is $305 to $780.
With most people facing costs like that, the Verizon workers probably aren't surprised that their fully employer-paid plan is being threatened. In the weeks before their contract expires on Aug. 2, they'll be fighting hard to keep it. Meanwhile, Jobs With Justice and Ross will keep holding it up as a symbol of what other workers could aspire to.
"Verizon workers are in a very important position in the labor movement," Ross said. "This is the model. People should have 100 percent coverage."
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