Taking the Bull By the Horns

You see it in company after company and from one set of contract negotiations to another. Health care costs are threatening to tear down our collective bargaining structure.

Locals across North America report employer attempts to transfer health benefit costs to our members and our retirees. In many cases health care costs are the only sticking point on getting a new contract, and our bargaining committees struggle with stopgap compromises. Meanwhile, the costs of employer-provided health benefits are expected to grow by another 15 percent in 2003, the third straight year of double-digit increases. At this rate, health care costs will double every five years. More than 40 million Americans have no health benefits, and more than 80 percent of them are people who work full-time.

Prescription drug costs are especially high, resulting in the obscene sight of U.S. citizens, especially seniors, lined up to cross both the Canadian and Mexican borders to fill their prescriptions. One union retiree testified that she needs three different medications each daybut takes only one to make each prescription last longer.

There have been efforts to extend prescription drug coverage to senior citizens under Medicare, but no action. And after the debacle during the Clinton years in trying to pass universal health care coverage for all citizens, there have been no serious attempts to try again, even as the problem grows worse.

As our Brotherhood does with any problem, our first impulse is to rely on our own devices, as opposed to waiting for others. To that end, President Hill decided to take the prescription drug bull by the horns. And that is why we now have the Electrical Industry SAV-RX Plan.

The plan is national in scope and available to all companies that employ IBEW members and IBEW local unions so that they can adopt it as part of their benefits package through their collective bargaining agreements. We are announcing the plan at our various branch conferences this spring and will publish more details in the next issue of the Journal.

How good is the Electrical Industry SAV-RX Plan? We were exceedingly cautious in its creation, negotiating the best possible deal that our purchasing power of numbers allowed us to obtain. We hired an actuarial firm to evaluate six prescription drug plans and compare the new Electrical Industry SAV-RX Plan to them. The Electrical Industry plan proved more cost-effective than all of them. If those plans had used our plan, they would have saved a combined total of over $3 million, and there is much more to this plan than just numbers.

We are determined to keep our costs under control. Our consultants will audit the Electrical Industry SAV-RX Plan on an annual basis to ensure compliance and help negotiate new terms. Second, at this time there are six other building trades unions that are looking to join with the IBEW in utilizing the Electrical Industry SAV-RX Plan under the same terms and conditions we have negotiated. Their numbers, combined with ours, will give us greater economy of scale, more purchasing power and greater leverage with our provider to make sure that we are getting the best possible program for our members.

One more thing. Dont try using the plan at Wal-Mart because that company has been excluded from the program. IBEW members will have plenty of other options besides spending their hard-earned benefit plan dollars at one of the most vicious anti-worker companies on the planet.

We hope that our prescription drug plan is only the beginning, and that we can bring the same principles and the same bargaining power to bear in creating a nationwide health care insurance plan that will be available to all IBEW locals. Stay tuned because we are certainly going to explore every feasible avenue. At stake for us is no less than our lifeblood, our collective bargaining contracts.