Organized labor and health reform: Union interests and the Clinton plan

Journal of Public Health Policy

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 30-48

  Weil, Laurence A ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HEALTH CARE COST; HEALTH CARE POLICY; HEALTH INSURANCE; OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE; SOCIOECONOMICS;

HEALTH CARE REFORM; HUMANS; LABOR UNIONS; MANAGED CARE PROGRAMS; POLITICS; PRIVATE SECTOR; SOCIAL WELFARE; UNITED STATES;

EID: 0031005827     PISSN: 01975897     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3343356     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. Salwen, Kevin. "Labor Unions Prepare Lobbying Effort for Clinton Health-Care Overhaul Plan," Wall Street Journal, June 3, 1993: A16.
2. Kilborn, Peter T. "Unions Plan to Spend $10 Million to Promote Clinton Health Plan," New York Times, February 22, 1994: A1
3. Salwen, Kevin. "Economy: Labor Unions Consider how to Spend Funds in Drive for Health Care Reform," Wall Street Journal, February 22, 1994: A2
4. That effort was dwarfed by the opposition. By way of comparison, consider that the Health Insurance Industry of America (HIAA), the trade association representing mainly smaller and meduim-sized insurance companies, alone spent $17 million opposing the Clinton plan (5).
5. Scarlett, Thomas. "Killing Health Care Reform: How Clinton's Opponents Used a Media Campaign to Lobby Congress and Sway Public Opinion," Campaigns and Elections, October-November, 1994: 34-37.
6. Skocpol, Theda. Boomerang: Clinton's Health Security Effort and the Turn against Government in U.S. Politics. New York: Norton, 1996.
7. Johnson, Haynes, and David S. Broder. The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996.
8. Metropolitan Life. Trade-Offs and Choices: A Louis Harris Survey Report. New York: Metropolitan Life, 1991, p. 62.
9. AFL-CIO. "The Permanent Replacement of Workers Striking Over Health Care Benefits in 1990," Washington, DC: AFL-CIO, Department of Employee Benefits, 1991.
10. Victor, Kirk. "Gut Issue," National Journal 22 (1990): 704-14.
11. Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Out of Control, Into Decline: The Devastating 12-Year Impact of Healthcare Costs on Worker Wages, Corporate Profits and Government Budgets. Washington, DC: SEIU, 1992.
12. International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Crafts, Government Relations Department, n.d. "Health Care Reform Should Not Come at the Expense of Building Trades Families!"
13. Battista, Andrew. "Political Divisions in Organized Labor, 1968-1988," Polity 24 (1991): 173-97.
14. McClure, Laura. "Labor's Blurred Vision," The Progressive, October 1990: 17-19.
15. McClure, Laura. "Unions and Health Care: Which Reform?" Christianity and Crisis, September 23, 1991: 277-78.
16. Stone, Katherine Van Wezel. "The Post-War Paradigm of Labor Relations," Yale Law Journal 90 (1981): 1509-79.
17. Tomlins, Christopher L. "The New Deal, Collective Bargaining, and the Triumph of Industrial Pluralism," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 39 (1985): 19-34.
18. Rein, Martin, and Lee Rainwater. "From Welfare State to Welfare Society," in M. Rein et al., eds. Stagnation and Renewal in Social Policy: The Rise and Fall of Policy Regimes. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1987: 143-59.
19. Brown, Michael. "The Segmented Welfare State," in Michael Brown, ed. Remaking the Welfare State. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988: 182-209.
20. Root, Lawrence S. "Employee Benefits and Social Welfare: Complement and Conflict," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 479 (1985): 101-18.
21. Berkowitz, Edward, and Kim McQuaid. 1992. Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Twentieth Century Reform, revised edition. Kansas City, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1992.
22. Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books, 1982.
23. Munts, Raymond. Bargaining for Health: Labor Unions, Health Insurance, and Medical Care. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.
24. Brandes, Stuart. American Welfare Capitalism, 1880-1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.
25. Brody, David. "The Rise and Decline of Welfare Capitalism," in D. Brody, ed. Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980: 48-81.
26. Dobbin, Frank R. "The Origins of Private Social Insurance: Public Policy and Fringe Benefits in America, 1920-1950," American Journal of Sociology 97 (1992): 1416-50.
27. Stevens, Beth. "Blurring the Boundaries: How the Federal Government Has Influenced Welfare Benefits in the Private Sector," in Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol, eds. The Politics of Social Policy in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988: 113-48.
28. Stevens, Beth. "Labor Unions, Employee Benefits, and the Privatization of the American Welfare State," Journal of Policy History 2 (1990): 133-60.
29. Lichtenstein, Nelson. "From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era," in Gary Gerstle and Stephen Fraser, eds. The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989: 122-52.
30. Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the American Dream. Verso Press, 1984.
31. Derickson, Alan. "Health Security for All? Social Unionism and Universal Health Insurance, 1935-1958," The Journal of American History 80 (1994): 1333-56.
32. Stevens, Rosemary. In Sickness and In Wealth. New York: Basic Books, 1991.
33. That still left the US lagging behing its industrial counterparts of the period, although in the area of inpatient care, where voluntary health insurance made its most rapid progress, the United States' record compared somewhat better (34, pp. 247, 254).
34. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). OECD Health Systems, Vol. I, Paris: OECD, 1993.
35. Greenstone, J. David. Labor in American Politics, revised edition. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977.
36. Orren, Karen. "Liberalism, Money, and the Situation of Organized Labor," in J. David Greenstone, ed. Public Values and Private Power in American Politics. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982: 173-206.
37. Orren, Karen. "Union Politics and Postwar Liberalism in the United States, 1946-1979," Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 215-54.
38. U.S. Department of Commerce. Statistical Abstract of the United States, selected volumes. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce.
39. Cohen, Stephen S., and John Zysman. Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
40. Piore, Michael, and Charles Sabel. The Second Industrial Divide: Prospects for Prosperity. New York: Basic Books, 1985.
41. Kuhn, Sarah, and John Wooding. "The Changing Structure of Work in the United States: Part I - The Impact on Income and Benefits," New Solutions 4 (1994, no. 2): 43-56.
42. Kuhn, Sarah, and John Wooding. "The Changing Structure of Work in the United States: Part II - Implications for Health and Welfare," New Solutions 4 (1994, no. 4): 21-27.
43. Christopherson, Susan. "Production Organization and Worktime: The Emergence of a Contingent Labor Market," in Flexible Workstyles: A Look at Contingent Labor. Washington, D.C.: Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, 1988.
44. Belous, Richard S. The Contingent Economy: The Growth of the Temporary, Part-Time, and Subcontract Workforce. Washington, D.C.: National Planning Association, 1989.
45. Sweeney, John, and Karen Nussbaum. Solutions for the New Work Force. Cabin John, MD: Seven Locks Press, 1989.
46. du Rivage, Virginia L. "Flexibility Trap: The Proliferation of Marginal Jobs," American Prospect 9 (1991): 84-93.
47. Woodbury, Stephen A., and Douglas R. Bettinger. "The Decline of Fringe-Benefit Coverage in the 1980s," in R. Eberts and E. Groshen, eds. Structural Change in U.S. Labor Markets: Causes and Consequences. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991: 105-43.
48. Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). "Sources of Health Insurance and Characteristics of the Uninsured," EBRI Issue Brief 123, February 1991.
49. Mitchell, Daniel J. B. "Employee Benefits and the New Economy: A Proposal for Reform," California Management Review 33 (1990): 113-30.
50. Rogers, Joel. "Divide and Conquer: Further 'Reflections on the Distinctive Character of American Labor Laws,'" Wisconsin Law Review 1990: 1-147.
51. Rogers, Joel. "Don't Worry, Be Happy," in J. Jenson and R. Mahon, eds. The Challenge of Restructuring. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993: 48-69.
52. Staples, Clifford L. "The Politics of Employment-Based Health Insurance in the United States," International Journal of Health Services 19 (1989): 415-31.
53. Interview, Robert McGarrah, AFSCME, 1996.
54. United States Department of Labor. "Multi/Multiple Employer Welfare Plans," Washington, D.C.: Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, 1990.
55. Because payroll taxes on Social Security and Medicare are paid only on wages, one would expect employer groups to desire an influence over the allocation of their gross contributions. Nevertheless, employers in the construction industry have usually been willing to defer to unions on that score (56).
56. Interview, James Ray, Connerton, Ray and Simon, 1996.
57. Taft-Hartley funds, especially the large pension trust funds, have occasionally been implicated in illegal activities. Although the presence of a large pool of money susceptible to manipulation obviously enhances the incentives for the union leadership to maintain control, the argument of this article rests only on the legal advantages those funds provide.
58. This problem, of course, must be faced by all types of health benefits plans, but it is particularly thorny for Taft-Hartley funds, which tend to invest rather conservatively and therefore have less room to maneuver when cash flows tighten (59).
59. Feinberg, Phyllis. "Taft-Hartley Plans Remain Conservative With Investments," Pension World, November 1988: 32-35.
60. Purcell, Leo J. Letter to Robert Georgine, President of the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department, January 28, 1991.
61. Interview, Mark Erlich, formerly of Massachussetts Building Trades Council, 1996.
62. According to data compiled by the Bricklayers, about 25 percent of the health and welfare contributions to multi-employer trusts was to cover the uncompensated costs incurred by the uninsured - and it was expected to rise to 31 percent by the year 2000 (12). In other words, the benefits of covered workers were getting more expensive, in part because they were subsidizing their own competition-non-union contractors who paid little or no benefits.
63. Buchanan, Don C. "Health Care Reform and Its Effects on Multi-Employer Plans," Sheet Metal Workers Journal, March/April, 1994: 5-6.
64. Georgine, Robert. "Testimony of Robert Georgine, Chairman of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans on H.R. 3600 - The Health Security Act," U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, December 9, 1993 (typescript).
65. Del Valle, Christina. "Even Cheerleaders Get the Blues," Business Week, May 30, 1994: 60-61.
66. Even the Massachussetts Building Trades, with its relatively activist stance, placed a low priority on organizing support for national health reform (of any description). It did, however, devote considerable effort to state-level single-payer initiatives (61).
67. Ray, Phil, and Carolyn York. "Health Benefits Survey Data," Memo to Gerald McEntee, September 7, 1993.
68. York, Carolyn. "Meeting with Judy Feder," Memo to Rob McGarrah, September 24, 1993.
69. McGarrah, Rob. Letter to Ira Magaziner, September 24, 1993.
70. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). "Discussion on Clinton Health Plan with Ira Magaziner," September 28, 1993.
71. Magaziner, Ira C. Letter to Gerald McEntee, December 6, 1993.
72. McEntee, Gerald W. "Our Concerns on the Clinton Health Plan," Letter to Senator Edward Kennedy, April 30, 1993.
73. Interview, Ellen Globokar, formerly of AFSCME, 1996.
74. Turner, Lowell. Democracy at Work: Changing World Markets and the Future of Unions. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
75. Freeman, Richard B., ed. Working Under Different Rules. New York: Russell Sage, 1994.
76. Voos, Paula. Contemporary Collective Bargaining in the Private Sector. Madison, WI: Industrial Relations Research Association, 1994.
77. Dark, Taylor E. "Organized Labor and the Democrats: Reconsidering the 1980s," Political Science Quarterly 111 (1996): 83-104.
78. Sousa, David J. "Organized Labor in the Electorate, 1960-1988," Political Research Quarterly 46 (1993): 741-58.
79. A long tradition in comparative politics reinforces the point that the adoption of social welfare programs has often been linked to the political capacity of labor movements and their allied parties (80,81).
80. Esping-Anderson, Gosta and Walter Korpi. "Social Policy as Class Politics in Post-War Capitalism," in J. Goldthorpe, ed. Crisis and Order in Contemporary Capitalism. London: Clarendon Press, 1984.
81. Navarro, Vicente. The Politics of Health Policy: The U.S. Reforms, 1980-1994. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994.