The Chief-Leader - December 7, 2007 , Friday

The Chief-Leader - December 7, 2007 , Friday
(The Chief-Leader is NewYork City’s civil service weekly newspaper with a weekly circulation of 35,000 and a readership of approximately 100,000.)

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Toussaint Wants National Health Care Reform
By ARI PAUL

Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint reflected on his last eight years of negotiating health-care benefits, doling out advice to union activists on how to approach labor's health agenda, during a Nov. 30 seminar at the Manhattan office of Cornell University's Industrial and Labor Relations School.

He joined Richard Lanigan, secretary-treasurer of the Office and Professional International Union Local 153, and United Automobile Workers Local 2120 President Maida Rosenstein, in a discussion, which drew a crowd of 50, moderated by Gene Carroll, the director of the school's Union Leadership Program.

Inherited Debt

All of them recognized that union negotiators faced the challenge of health benefits, the costs of which are skyrocketing, as part of the entire wage package. Mr. Toussaint said that when he became president in 2000, the union had inherited a health-care trust that was millions of dollars in debt.

"In 2002 we were able to get the [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] to absorb the entire $40 million-plus debt or deficit with the condition that they were allowed to administer the plan directly," he said.

This came at a cost, as it meant there would be no wage increases, he said.

"We kind of flipped the script," Mr. Toussaint said, noting that usually unions have accepted health-care contributions in exchange for wages. "But we told the members the truth."

Explains Concession

Then came the 2005 contract fight, where the MTA wanted workers to accept a 1.5-percent-of-pay contribution for health coverage, a factor leading to the initial rejection of the contract after the three-day strike in December of that year. The 1.5-percent plan eventually went into effect, and Mr. Toussaint argued that in exchange the union scored a big victory for retirees, who until then had no contractual health coverage.

"There's now a seamless cradle-to-grave coverage as far as health benefits go from active life to retired life to Medicare coverage," he said.

New York City Transit Cleaner Marvin Holland was in attendance and disagreed with Mr. Toussaint's rosy assessment of the current contract for transit workers.

"We're the only ones in town doing it," he said after the talk, referring to the fact that other municipal workers do not pay a portion of their premiums. "I think he's trying to defend his last couple of rounds of contract negotiations, which were failures."

No Policy Partnership

Mr. Carroll asked the union leaders if they had plans to work with employees to lobby for dramatic health-care reform, as Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern has often advocated, bringing the leader of the nation's largest union into an awkward coalition with H. Lee Scott, the C.E.O. of Wal-Mart, a notoriously anti-union retail company.

Mr. Toussaint was skeptical of the idea, as this would mean MTA Executive Director Elliot G. Sander would have to campaign against the very government machinery that appointed him.

Ms. Rosenstein also had mixed hopes about management/labor partnerships in this regard. She recalled that while bargaining with Columbia University, which she described as "buying up half of New York," management's negotiator argued that since health-care coverage should be the government's responsibility, the onus to fully fund coverage for employees in the meantime was no longer on the employer.

"We can't let our employers off the hook," she said.

Mr. Toussaint stated that unions should stop framing health-care benefits as a part of the wage package, as this would encourage employers to try to shift health-care costs onto workers while giving them wage increases. But overall, he was in agreement with the other leaders that the current system of a private, for-profit health-care system has proven inadequate, as most industrialized democratic countries throughout the world have some form of government-guaranteed health care, and that it was incumbent upon union leaders to educate and mobilize their members to advocate change.

"We need a serious fight for health-care reform," he said. "Labor has not stepped up in the way that it needs to."


Ari Paul
Reporter, The Chief-Leader
212-962-2690, ext. 107
aripaul@rcn.com