Unions, community groups hail Council passage of Health Care Act
Aug 17, 2005 4:05 PM
“When businesses fail to provide health care insurance for their workers, it’s often the city or state government that ends up picking up the tab,” UFT President Randi Weingarten told a rally of health care supporters outside City Hall Aug. 17.
“The more taxpayer money the city and the state spend on the health care of New Yorkers working for profitable, private companies, the less money there is for education and other important things,” Weingarten said in congratulating the City Council on its passing Intro. 468A, the New York City Health Care Security Act.
The act requires medium to large grocers to provide their workers with health care and would end the practice of taxpayers subsidizing low-wage employers. “It rewards responsible businesses and ends the wage-race to the bottom, Weingarten said.
Her remarks were punctuated by shouts of “Bloomberg, sign the bill.”
The bill must be approved by the mayor to become law, or overridden by a two-thirds majority of the council if vetoed by the mayor. The bill is co-sponsored by 43 Council members, including Speaker Gifford Miller.
Appearing in place of Central Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin, Weingarten congratulated all the unions attending, including those who formally withdrew from the AFL-CIO in July. “This shows that all the CLC locals and those who will be Solidarity chapters are 100 percent united” on the question of employer-provided health care.
“If signed by the mayor, the law will stop one more kind of corporate welfare and be a blow to the bottom feeders,” Council health committee chair Christine Quinn, the bill’s chief sponsor, said.
Sponsors said the bill was drawn up after employers such as Wal-Mart artificially kept costs low by failing to provide many employees with health care. That alone has flooded states’ Medicaid rolls, and impacted on such New York State programs as Healthcare Plus and Childcare Plus. New York State’s Medicaid program costs taxpayers some $45 billion each year.
Backers of the bill include major businesses, including Fairway, Gristedes, D’Agostino's, Key Food, Pathmark, Costco and Stop and Shop. More than 70 percent of grocery industry employers currently provide health care benefits to employees. Wal-Mart does not. Gristedes CEO John Catsimatidis said that allowing some employers to avoid providing health benefits harms his employees, too. “If I have to compete with low-road cost cutters like Wal-Mart, it’s going to be hard for me to continue providing my employees with the care they deserve.”
Once enacted, the law will expand employer-provided health care benefits to some 6,000 employees in the grocery industry, and protect the 21,000 employees who now receive such coverage. It will also apply to any new retailers looking to open in the five boroughs.
Among the host of speakers were officers from the United Food and Commercial Workers, the union representing grocery workers. The rally and press conference were organized by NY Jobs for Justice and NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.
