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MANAGED CARE EXECUTIVE EDITION February 2003. ©MediMedia USA
NEWS AND COMMENTARY
Major unions refuse to budge on benefits
Unions at General Electric went on strike for the first time in 30 years thanks to the company's effort to transfer more to the burden of paying for health insurance to employees. The two-day walkout at GE occurred Jan. 14 and 15.
In addition, other major industries face similar labor unrest over health coverage. U.S. automakers and the United Auto Workers union, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and trucking companies will also be negotiating this year.
"Rising health care costs mean that health care benefits and who should pay for the increases are going to be an issue in almost every set of negotiations until those increases disappear," Rick Banks, director of collective bargaining for the AFL-CIO tells the Washington Post. "And that's not going to happen anytime soon."
GE plans to increase employee costs for physician visits and other health care services by 40 percent, from about $500 to $700 a year, Gary Sheffer, a company spokesman, tells the Post.
Overall costs to GE workers will go up about 20 percent above the current $1,000 a year. The company says that its health care costs have increased about 45 percent from 1999 to 2002 ($965 million to $1.4 billion).
Companies expect health care costs to rise 14.6 percent this year, according to a recent poll by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
As a result of such forecasts, many businesses are testing the limits of how much of the increase they can pass off to workers.
"From the point of view of many unions, what they see is an unraveling of what it has taken many decades to put together, which is the employer paying most of the cost of benefits," Harley Shaiken, a professor specializing in labor issues at the University of California at Berkeley, tells the Post.
The GE union workers are represented by the International Union of Electrical-Communications Workers of America; and United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. They represent about 20,000 of the company's 121,000 workers.