Re: [Marxism] Brooks column (Was Wage share...etc.)

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sayan B. wrote:

> On 9/9/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I don't have the documentation handy, but it's widely accepted that the
> > rising cost of benefits, which are also notionally included in employee
> > "income", are no longer being passed on to workers as improvements but
> > are
> > being transferred to the health care and insurance industries. In fact,
> > soaring benefit costs are now being used by employers in both unionized
> > and
> > non-union firms to roll back existing medical and pension plans across
> > all
> > industries.
>
> I believe the counter-argument usually made to this charge is that,
> while the cost of health care benefits are rising, this is because
> medical  treatments are better and more sophisticated now than in the
> past -- new and expensive (and more effective) treatments are now
> available that were not available before. The employee may, thus,
> according to this line of reasoning, choose a lower-cost option (and
> accept a lower quality of health-care than the state-of-the-art, which
> quality would nonetheless be similar to, or even better than, what
> used to be state-of-the-art a decade ago).  I don't know how much
> truth there is to this line of reasoning, though, but on the face of
> it it seems a reasonable and convincing one.
===============================
I don't think the issue is the employer's ability to pay; they always plead
poverty. The issue is one of bargaining power - the ability of unions to
coerce improvements or to at least defend existing benefits, and the need
for non-union employers to pass on these benefits in order to recruit and
retain their own personnel.

I don't know the history or particulars of US employer-paid health plans,
but I would be surprised if costs have not consistently risen as new and
better treatments have become available. The difference is that employers
were once compelled by their unions to extend coverage and absorb the
increased costs and now they are not. The balance of power between workers
and employers in the advanced capitalist countries has been greatly altered
by the vastly increased ability of employers to shed labour and transfer
operations to lower wage areas both within and outside their borders.

It is not as though US employers are no longer as able to absorb higher
medical and other benefit costs, notwithstanding their aging workforces;
with some notable exceptions in the auto and airline industries, they have
been generating record levels of profits and are sitting on unprecedented
piles of cash. In the absence of pressure from their workers, the
corporations are doing what you would expect them to do; they are returning
their surplus capital to shareholders in the form of higher dividends and
buybacks and embarking on a new round of mergers and acquisitions, all the
while relentlessly forcing their employees to surrender their
defined-benefit pension plans and swallow higher premiums and co-payments
and reduced coverage for health care and other programs.

The inability of the unions to resist the assault on health care benefits is
the major reason why US employers as a class haven't sought to transfer
responsibility for health insurance to the state, as their counterparts have
previously done elsewhere,




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