WASHINGTON — A two-day protest over higher health care costs by members of IUE-CWA at General Electric reveals an exploding crisis over health care costs and coverage as well as American workers’ refusal to be “shock absorbers” for the crisis, the 13 million-member AFL-CIO says. The AFL-CIO strongly supports the protest, which GE officials sparked when the company demanded that all of its 200,000 employees pay a total of $28-30 million more for health care. GE has explicitly stated that its objective in next year’s labor negotiations is to shift up to one-third of its total medical care costs onto its workers and retirees, beginning with this step.
“GE is one of the richest, most powerful corporations in the world. GE is certainly in a better position to absorb these costs than its employees are,” said AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney.
The recent dramatic rise in health care costs has increasingly led employers across the country to attempt to shift the burden of additional healthcare costs to their employees. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, companies increased workers’ monthly premiums on average by 27 percent for single coverage and 16 percent for family coverage between 2001-2002, despite average hourly wage increases of only 3.8 percent in 2001 and 2.9 percent in 2002.
Employers not only raise the cost of premiums, but they also raise the annual deductible, increase the employees’ share of co-payments, severely restrict who qualifies for coverage and decrease the employer’s share of prescription drug coverage. “If this trend continues, only the most well off will be able to afford healthcare,” said Sweeney.
The strike led by the IUE-CWA is a protest on behalf of all GE employees–not just union members, and it sends a message to other employers with similar intentions that employees will not accept the destruction of hard-won healthcare benefits.
“Our healthcare system is broken and cannot be fixed by shifting the pain of higher costs to employees and creating more underinsured and uninsured citizens. Instead of trying to shift the burden of rising healthcare costs to employees, employers like GE should be working with the unions that represent their employees to solve the problems at the root of the healthcare crisis,” said AFL-CIO President Sweeney. “Thankfully many employers are participating with their unions in tackling the underlying problems of poor quality, misuse, and waste in healthcare.”