Vol.64/No.23 June 12, 2000
Health care and pensions must be extended to entire class for a lifetime
{From 'The Changing Face of U.S. Politics' column}
The May 17 rally in Washington by thousands of coal miners and retirees demanding the U.S. government not cut their lifetime health benefits put the spotlight on the need for the labor movement to fight for such an entitlement to be extended to the entire working class. Today, 43 million people in the United States have no health insurance coverage, and 100,000 people lose their cover every month. The percentage of the U.S. population with no health insurance increased to 16 percent in 1999 from 13.6 percent in 1990. Meanwhile, the share of employed workers covered by employer-sponsored health plans has fallen, and more and more workers enrolled in such plans are being forced to pay an increasing portion of the costs of these benefits. The proportion of workers required to make contributions toward health benefits for single coverage rose from 51 percent in 1991 to 69 percent in 1997, and for family coverage from 69 percent to 80 percent.
Printed below is an excerpt from a report, which takes up this social question, entitled "Leading the party into industry," approved by the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in February 1978. The entire talk can be found in The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Unions. Copyright © 1994 Pathfinder press; reprinted by permission.
BY JACK BARNES
When we talk about the social and political responsibilities of labor we explain the need to combat the ruling-class policy of imposing on the individual family the responsibility for social services that should be taken care of by society--the care of the young, the elderly, the sick and disabled. But that's not the only way capitalism works. The employers also try to impose upon the individual workers responsibilities that should be met by society. And more and more they try to establish that these responsibilities will be met only according to the profitability of each worker's own boss. I leave aside the most grotesque single examples such as the public-employee unions' officials sinking massive amounts of pension funds into city bonds in New York City. But more and more so-called general fringe benefits--pensions, health-care plans, supplemental unemployment benefits--all become contingent on the continuing profits of the boss you work for. We see this growing in industries like coal, steel, and auto.
These benefits are not won for the class as a whole, or even a section of the class. It's almost like a march back toward feudalism, not a march forward toward socialism. These fringes are good in good times--for workers who have them--because they're a substantial addition to everything else industrial workers can count on. But when the squeeze comes on, this all begins to fall apart. Your pension funds are threatened. Your health-care plans are dismantled. The supplemental unemployment benefits run out. And the squeeze is on.
This is the payoff when the debt of business unionism comes due. This is the price paid for the class-collaborationist policy of refusing to fight for the real needs of the class--the social security of the class, national health care, for national unemployment insurance that's real and high enough, for a shorter workweek at no cut in pay, for protection against inflation, and for independent working-class political action. This is the price paid for a bureaucracy that says independent social and political struggles are secondary, and says the employers' promise in the contract are decisive.
This is the payoff for the refusal of the labor bureaucracy to fight for the broad social needs of the working class and to build a political instrument to fight for them.
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