Sarah's Essay:

Why America Still Needs Labor Unions

My dad’s union helped save my life, and more. Unions can do the same for others, and that is why America still needs labor unions.

I am a ballet dancer. In May, 2001 when I was eleven, I developed pain in my knee. My mother took me to the doctor. After examination, the conclusion was that my pain was related to the dance practice, or from simply growing too fast. I danced all summer in an intensive dance school program.

Three months later, in August, my family and I were traveling to Chicago when the pain turned into a huge molten swelling, so bad I couldn’t walk or bare the pain in any position. Upon arrival, my mother took me to the emergency room of a Chicago hospital, where the in initial diagnosis was bone cancer. An MRI the next day revealed the equally life-threatening bone infection, osteomyelitis. I had the finest pediatric orthopedic surgeon as my doctor, who drained the bone.

I was in Chicago Children’s Hospital for six days, where the best pediatric infectious disease specialist prepared a plan to combat the infection. A PIC line was inserted to my heart for intravenous antibiotics. I was given these for six weeks. After I went home, I took oral antibiotics for six months. Recently I had another MRI for a dance related injury which revealed that the bone was completely healed – the doctor said he could not even see where the bone had been cut away to let the infection drain. Throughout this whole painful and frightening ordeal, we never worried about money to pay for my treatment; we were able to focus all of our attention on my recovery from a life-threatening disease.

In 2000, my dad’s union negotiated an agreement with his employer to allow the union to establish its own health benefits trust. My dad was elected the first chair of the Trust Board, and continues as Trust Board chair to the present.

According to my dad, his union Health Trust has been able to deliver more benefits, at better prices, to the union’s members and families, than the employer had been able to do previously. And, as indicated, the Health Trust has also been a big benefit to me personally.
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I also have asthma. I appreciate the ability of the Health Trust to help provide medicine to help me maintain my condition at a reasonable cost to my parents.
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America’s unions are working to do more to provide health care benefits for their members. For over 15 months, many unions supported the independent, nonpartisan Citizens’ Health Care Working Group which held public meetings throughout the United States about the health care system and how Americans want it changed. Based on the comments, the Citizens’ Working Group sent recommendations to the Congress and the President on September 29, 2006.

This is a time of crisis for our nation’s health care system. According to the Health Care Working Group’s report, the United States spends nearly two trillion dollars on health each year. The Group developed recommendations which included: 1. Establish public policy that all Americans have affordable health care; 2. Guarantee financial protection against very high health care costs; 3. Foster innovative integrated community health networks; 4. Define core benefits and services for all Americans; 5. Promote efforts to improve quality of care and efficiency; and, 6. Fundamentally restructure the way end-of-life services are financed and provided.

Health care costs are rising faster than union members’ pay, and the issue of health coverage has been the most important issue in nearly every contract union Locals have bargained all over the country in recent years. As suggested in the Working Group’s report, health care costs are continuing to rise much faster than the members’ ability to pay for those costs. The result has been that union members are being denied wage increases just to keep their health benefits.

America’s unions are working to help achieve health care reform in America. Although most people can get health benefits at work, not every employer provides an affordable health care plan.  America’s unions are supporting candidates and elected officials who are taking the lead on health care reform and who are trying to stop cost shifting to governments and to working people.

Because of my dad’s involvement with his union, I have seen first-hand how much unions have invested on behalf of its members. Twice my dad was elected as a delegate to a national political convention. Both times his union paid my dad’s expenses to attend. During the second convention, I was able to obtain a guest pass and go into the convention hall with him. I observed first-hand the convention speeches and floor debate as well as convention voting. I then wrote an article about the convention, which was published in my home-town newspaper.
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