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Los
Angeles Times
December
20, 2007
by Michael
Rothfeld and Jordan Rau
SACRAMENTO -- As Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez sought the
endorsement of two major labor unions for his plan to overhaul
healthcare in the state, he added several provisions to the
legislation sweetening the deal for union members, including
millions of dollars for better benefits and worker training.
The
changes came soon after the unions donated more than $1 million
combined to an initiative sponsored by Nunez that would extend
numerous lawmakers' terms, including his own.
In
the final version, unveiled only days before Monday's vote,
the unions received three years of increases in state funding
of health insurance for tens of thousands of workers who
provide in-home care for the elderly, blind and disabled.
The
legislation as approved gives unions unilateral authority
to create and operate trust funds to provide employee healthcare,
taking the power to negotiate away from the county agencies
that employ the workers. The amendment was sought by the
Service Employees International Union.
"We weren't aware of it until Monday afternoon," said
Paul McIntosh, the executive director of the California State
Assn. of Counties.
"It appears that we don't have an opportunity to express
our concerns,"
McIntosh said. "One of the questions
we have, that we're still analyzing, is whether this would
drive up the cost of that insurance."
He said the benefit
increase for home care workers -- which would reach 75 cents
an hour in the third year -- could be significant because
the workers are on duty tens of millions of hours a year.
Another perk the unions negotiated allocates
$25 million a year for a "Workforce Development Program
Fund" that
would provide retraining for their members employed at county
hospitals and clinics.
Nunez's spokesman, Steve Maviglio,
said the speaker made multiple changes to the bill in the
final days for many groups.
"We worked with hundreds of stakeholders, including
organized labor," Maviglio said.
"There was a flurry of activity," he said. "That's
part of compromise -- give and take -- and that's exactly
what happened. Nobody walked away from the table 100% happy."
Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the other main architect of the $14-billion
deal to extend healthcare to most Californians starting in
2010, went along with the changes that Nunez (D-Los Angeles)
made on the unions' behalf.
Aaron McLear,
Schwarzenegger's spokesman, said "the
governor and the speaker gave some ground in this negotiation,
and the governor is pleased with the final product."
The
plan, whose fate in the state Senate is still murky, also
requires that voters approve a companion initiative to finance
it. The governor and speaker plan to place that measure on
the November ballot.
The support of SEIU and the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
will be essential to the plan's backers in that fight. And
the unions were crucial for Nunez to sway all the Democratic
lawmakers in the Assembly to vote for Nunez's plan. With
a number of unions and other groups opposed, lawmakers would
have feared political repercussions without some of their
traditional campaign supporters backing them.
At the same time they were pushing for changes to the
bill, the unions were also providing big donations to Nunez's
initiative campaign to change the state's term limits law.
The American Federation has given $610,633, most of it last
month, and SEIU has given $1.1 million, half of it last week.
Andy Stern,
the head of SEIU, marked the bill's passage Monday in the
Assembly by flying in from Washington for a news conference
with Nunez and Schwarzenegger.
"We were waiting for the payoff to show up," said
Jerry Flanagan, healthcare policy director for the Foundation
for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a Santa Monica-based nonprofit
that believes the Nunez plan will be too expensive for some
consumers. "It's really remarkable, in terms of the
express aiming of this money toward two particular unions."
But
Jeanine Meyer Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the SEIU California
State Council, said her union's support for the bill was
not based on horse-trading.
"We have been working on healthcare reform really, really
hard all year long," she said. "And there is this
perception that suddenly all these amendments happen and
then we're on board, which is just wrong."
Willie L.
Pelote Sr., the assistant director for political action for
the federation in Sacramento, said that others negotiated
the recent changes and that he was not aware of them.
The new language boosting health benefits for in-home
care workers would add an immediate 25 cents an hour to the
state's current 60-cent hourly reimbursement rate. That increase
would rise to 50 cents an hour in the second year and 75
cents in the third year if state revenues increased by a
5% benchmark.
Beth Capell, a lobbyist for SEIU, said the union
made no apologies for pushing to increase benefits for the
workers, who, she added, often make little more than minimum
wage.
"SEIU is committed to getting low-wage workers we represent
health benefits," she said.
The union represents county
hospital workers in every California county where there is
one except San Mateo and Contra Costa counties, which are
represented by the American Federation, Capell said.
She also said trust funds have been used by unions
to provide health insurance for years.
But McIntosh of the California
counties association said that in some areas "there's
been some contention specifically with SEIU over a trust-funded
health plan versus alternatives" that
counties would prefer to provide on their own. He said his
group would take up the issue in the Senate.
"It appears that the amendment restricts the counties'
negotiating ability when it comes to healthcare," McIntosh
said.
As for the workforce development program, Capell said
it was based on a pilot project in Los Angeles County, where
hospital workers have to be trained in new jobs as public
hospitals take on an increased role in providing care for
the uninsured. She said most federal money goes to train
new workers, hence the need for more money for existing hospital
employees.
"When you reorganize big institutions like county hospitals,
people have to be moved around and they need to be retrained," Capell
said. |
