NEW YORK STATE
GHI workers strike over health benefits
By John Catalinotto
New York
What would drive an employed single mother to risk her
income and security by walking out on strike and picketing for
two weeks, and still keep going?
Ask any one of the more than 1,000 workers at Group Health
Insurance who voted unanimously to strike after the last
company offer and have been out since April 16. They will tell
you that more than anything it is the company's demand that
workers pay high co-payments and co-premiums for the health
insurance GHI provides its employees.
The King Mexican-American Delica tessen at Ninth Avenue and
36th Street in Manhattan serves as temporary strike
headquarters for the hundreds of workers walking the picket
line outside GHI's offices at Ninth and 34th. There, Workers
World spoke with Neysa Griffith.
Griffith has been chief shop steward of Office and
Professional Employees Local 153 for the past 15 years, and a
GHI employee for the last 33.
"Our union has worked for the past 40 years to get fair
benefits and we will not give them up," Griffith vowed. "Our
workers have never had to pay for benefits. GHI is a
health-care provider. Offering adequate health care to its
employees is supposedly part of their corporate
philosophy."
Some 1,172 union members are on strike at GHI's offices in
three Manhattan locations and in Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo,
N.Y. Most are clerical, mailroom and computer workers who
process health-insurance claims for the company and its
customers.
Griffith said, "Many of our members are single mothers and
most are women."
A quick look at the picket line showed that Local 153 is
made up of the most dynamic sector of the U.S. working
class--women, people of color, immigrants.
The union contract ended Dec. 1. Unionists decided to strike
after the company made an offer that required co-pays and
premiums for health and dental insurance, separated the pension
plans of union and management workers, and limited salary
adjustments to 3 percent for the next three years. The union is
asking to roll over the old contract regarding benefits and for
pay increases of 4, 5 and 5 percent respectively over that
three-year period.
GHI insures all city agencies including the fire and
sanitation departments, postal workers and New York-based
federal employees. The company has attempted to use
management-level employees to scab on the union members by
doing their work. Union organizers say using management to
process claims could disrupt service for millions of GHI
policyholders.
Anyone walking along Ninth Avenue can see a strong picket
line of hundreds of workers, often shouting out union chants
above the din of New York traffic. If the show of militancy is
a measure of the strength of the strike, GHI management had
better give in soon.
Reprinted from the May 9, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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