The Houston Chronicle, April 27, 2006, Thursday

Copyright 2006 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
The Houston Chronicle

April 27, 2006 Thursday
3 STAR EDITION

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: Protesters target health coverage;
Union members urge Wal-Mart to offer workers a better deal

BYLINE: L.M. SIXEL, Staff

BODY:
Protesters gathered outside a Wal-Mart in Pasadena on Wednesday as part of a national campaign to pressure the retailer to offer employees a better deal on health insurance.
The Houston-area effort, in which about 40 union members passed out leaflets, was part of an effort in 35 cities across the country by the new labor federation Change to Win.
Labor organizers chose to focus on Wal-Mart to draw attention to the nation's health crisis, said Miles Anderson, an organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers local 455 union in Houston and local coordinator of WakeUpWalMart.com.
Forty-three percent of the 1.4 million Wal-Mart employees have health insurance, Anderson said, adding that in a typical company with 200 or more employees, 68 percent would have health insurance.
Wal-Mart responded that it has made changes to offer health coverage for more workers, by expanding the availability of the plan costing $11 per month to half of its work force and offering a more affordable drug benefit.
"America's working families are struggling to deal with the soaring cost of health care. At Wal-Mart, we're offering solutions," according to a prepared statement from the retailer. "Sadly, these rallies are more about politics and publicity stunts than health care."
While Wal-Mart allows its employees to buy insurance after just one year on the job, it's still too expensive for those employees who earn $7 an hour, said Chris Kofinis, communications director for WakeUpWalmart.com.
More events ahead The seven unions make up Change to Win, which was formed last year as a rival to the AFL-CIO. They say the Make Work Pay effort is the first coordinated national action by the group, which represents more than 6 million workers.
At noon today, Change to Win representatives including the Teamsters are expected to meet at the Port of Houston as well at ports in Los Angeles, Oakland and Miami to rally behind port drivers.
According to the labor federation, the drivers earn substandard fees for hauling loads for companies moving cargo through the port.
And on Friday, protesters are expected to march in front of the offices of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas in Houston to call attention to the lack of benefits for office cleaners in that building who are employed by a private cleaning service.
"It's ironic that the janitors who clean the offices of the largest health insurer in Texas don't have health insurance themselves," said Lynda Tran, spokeswoman for SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign.
Margaret Jarvis, a spokeswoman for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, responded that "We do care about the uninsured."
But the cleaning company is hired by the building's owner.
"We're really the innocent bystander in this dispute between the union and the owner of our building," Jarvis said. The landlord has the contractual right to select its own cleaning contractor.
The cleaning company is PJS Services.
" To our knowledge, no contract cleaning company in Houston is providing health insurance benefits to their part-time employees including the national cleaning companies," PJS president Floyd Mahanay said. "We are confident that, when given all of the facts regarding union membership vs. nonunion, our employees will make the decision that is right for them, and we will respect their decision."
Focusing on health benefits Kofinis said the UFCW union isn't leading an organizing drive at Wal-Mart. Instead, the union is building a campaign to pressure companies to offer better health benefits for workers.
"Our effort is to build the largest grass roots in America so the company can't ignore the political pressure," he said.
The Change to Win coalition is picking locations across the nation where it already has a foundation for building an organizing program, said Richard Hurd, a professor of labor studies at Cornell University.
But it isn't a typical organizing campaign, he said, adding that it is using the giant retailer as a symbol of what's wrong with health care.
It's a long-term strategy. The UFCW doesn't have an organizing campaign going on against Wal-Mart - that would be too expensive, Hurd said.
Instead, it's a way to make a public stand on an important issue in an untraditional way instead of just going to Congress to lobby, he said. And it shows people that someone is standing up for them, which may well make union organizing easier later on.

NOTES: lm.sixel@chron.com

GRAPHIC: Photo: PASADENA DEMONSTRATION: Connie Guinn of Pearland shakes her sign at a motorist during a rally Wednesday to demand better health insurance from Wal-Mart outside the retailer's store in Pasadena.
BILLY SMITH II : CHRONICLE