When you’re a nurse, going on strike is one of the toughest decisions that you can make in your career. It’s a choice than none of us ever make lightly.
But sometimes there is a concern that is so vital that we have no choice but to take a stand. Last week, my fellow nurses and health care workers at Group Health Cooperative – members of Service Employees International District 1199NW – decided that we had to go on strike for five days to maintain access to affordable family health care for Group Health’s frontline staff.
In ongoing contract negotiations, Group Health management has demanded severe cuts to health benefits for employees and their families. These cuts would force some of my colleagues to pay thousands of dollars in new costs to continue to provide health coverage for their families. While Group Health is offering some wage increases, for many of my coworkers those increases would immediately be given back though higher health-care costs.
My coworkers and I have offered to pay more of the cost of our health care. But Group Health’s demands are unreasonable and don’t make sense for the future of the cooperative, for several important reasons:
* Health benefit cuts would hurt recruitment and retention, ultimately weakening patient care. It is well known that Washington is coping with a protracted shortage of nurses and other kinds of health-care workers. Dependable, affordable health benefits have allowed Group Health to attract and retain a remarkably dedicated and capable workforce. Many of my coworkers chose to work at Group Health because of the quality of the health benefits. National surveys have shown that health benefits are one of the most important factors that nurses take into account when they accept a new position.
At a time when Group Health already has more than 150 nursing positions going vacant, cutting health benefits would make it harder to fill those holes. In the long run, we fear that inadequate recruitment and retention will make it harder to deliver the care our patients deserve.
* Shifting costs onto working people doesn’t solve the larger problem. If Group Health, which has been a model employer when it comes to providing good benefits, cuts employees’ health care, it’s another sign that everyone’s access to affordable care is at risk.
Washingtonians are paying too much for health care. The exploding cost of care is a systemic crisis caused by out of control prescription costs, wasteful spending on paperwork and insurance company red tape, bloated salaries for HMO and insurance company executives, and the high cost of providing care to the uninsured in emergency rooms instead of through good primary care. The real solution is to make the system more efficient so we can get control of the costs. Piling more costs onto working people – without doing anything to reduce the overall cost of care – isn’t working.
SEIU members are speaking out to make sure that our elected leaders pay attention to this crisis. Everyone needs to get involved. During our strike, we urged people who came to our picket line to sign up to become “health-care voters” and get involved to hold politicians accountable for finding solutions that will expand access to care.
* Group Health can afford to maintain access to affordable health care. It’s important to keep some perspective on how much it costs Group Health to provide health care to SEIU members. While Group Health’s benefit costs have indeed gone up in recent years, in 2003 the total cost of providing medical care to SEIU members and their families added up to less than 1 percent of Group Health’s budget. The cooperative earned $188 million in positive revenue last year and is on track to enjoy another solid year in 2004.
We return to our jobs this week looking forward to getting back to what we love doing: caring for Group Health members. We also hope that Group Health comes to understand that what happened last week means that this is an issue that we believe is worth taking a stand on. Our hope is that Group Health will return to the negotiation table ready to have a constructive discussion with us.
Giving in to Group Health’s demands wouldn’t help solve the crisis. It would just add more momentum in a race to the bottom. My coworkers and I will continue to stand up for affordable family health care.
Sarah Cooney is a registered nurse at Group Health Cooperative.
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