“Union employees don’t pay health insurance premiums”
July 7th, 2008 | by Brian Schwartz |An article from the Rocky Mountain News last week suggests why unions support employer-sponsored insurance:
Qwest Communications and its largest union start new contract talks Tuesday, negotiations especially critical given the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver. … The Communications Workers of America represents roughly 21,000 employees, or about 55 percent of Qwest’s work force. … Currently, union employees don’t pay health insurance premiums, but they do have co-pays and other costs, such as shared premiums for family members.
I suspect that union officials negotiated this arrangment with Qwest, and that their ability to do this gives employees more incentive to join the union. Employer-sponsored insurance exists largly because the tax code makes it tax exempt, so it’s likely that unions support this policy as a method of increasing their negotiating power and attractiveness to employees. If unions had their way, I wonder if they’d push for a tax policy that favors employer-sponsored auto-insurance, too.
As I’ve written before, employer-sponsored insurance offers few choices in plans, locks people to their jobs, and reduces insurer’s incentive to please customers because of the job lock.
tags: employer-sponsored insurance, unions
