Auto makers want UAW to administer health benefits
The UAW is meant to start negotiating with the “big three” American auto makers this week. And if the Globe’s spin is to be believed, the big issue is health insurance.
The companies complain their labour costs them $25 an hour more than their Asian rivals (Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan etc) and they threaten dire consequences etc etc unless the unions capitulate. It’s unfortunate that this is my second paragraph because it holds for me not a shred of interest.
What is interesting is what the story hints will be the employers’ demand to Save The Company™. They want the unions to collect money for and administer the company’s health benefits package.
Now, nowhere in this article is this notion attributed to anyone close to the UAW-Big Three negotiations, but you have to imagine the reported didn’t go searching brightideasforbigcompanies.com for something nifty to put in his story. Someone from the management side’s PR firm is floating it as a trial balloon I suspect. So it’s on the agenda.
This is interesting.
Brief flag-waving moment: in Canada, the big three write letters to government in support of public health care. It’s a huge advantage companies here have over American competitors.
…assuming you have to pay for your employees’ health care. But what if you get the unions to do it?
While the devil is always in the details, the article implies that it wouldn’t affect workers’ coverage. The employers would pay them a certain amount (significantly less than their current health insurance bill I note – 70 cents on the dollar) and the unions would administer the benefit plans.
Nice. “We want to cut your benefits, but we want you to do it to your own people.”
And to get there we’re going to exploit that (often accurate) notion that union leaders have that managing is too important to be left up to management.
More flag waving. The article puts GM and Ford’s total cost of employee health benefits at $69 billion US per year. With the exchange, that’s more than half what the entire Canadian medicare system cost.
Of course, turning the employer contribution to employee health insurance into a straight cash transfer to the union will have other benefits for the employer. Instead of spending hours of staff time poring over piles and piles of paper (or multi-meg spreadsheets) looking for ways to cut costs, the employer’s chief negotiator just needs to put a single number on a paper and shunt it across the table.
“We paid 70 cents on the dollar, now we want to pay 65.”
And when Bob’s insurance stops paying for his chemotherapy because it seems too expensive to warrant the potential to extend his life, it’ll be the union that’s to blame.
