The other day, the District unilaterally reneged on the agreement.
Now I'm gonna go buy a box of donuts & visit the troops
KTVU.com Santa Cruz Metro Warns Of Possible Strike Tuesday
POSTED: 9:32 pm PDT September 26, 2005 http://www.ktvu.com/print/5024045/detail.html
SANTA CRUZ -- Bus drivers in Santa Cruz could be going on strike Tuesday, according to Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District.
"Metro has been receiving unofficial indications" that a strike is imminent, the agency reported in a statement tonight.
Officials with United Transportation Union Local 23, which represents the drivers, were not immediately available for comment.
Some three weeks ago, the union threatened to strike but workers decided at the last minute to stay on the job. Metro reported on Sept. 8 that an agreement reached that day would keep drivers working until June.
On Friday, Metro's board affirmed what it called its last, best and final offer in contract negotiations.
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September 4, 2005
The real struggle is about health care By Dan Roth
As the Metro negotiations continue, there is something deeply puzzling about seeing Mayor Mike Rotkin — a longtime advocate of labor — being pitted, along with the county Board of Supervisors, against the UTU bus drivers union.
How did this happen?
I don’t think Rotkin has turned his back on his values. But we are so used to looking at labor disputes as clashes between unions and management, that we don’t even realize when there’s a third player in the dispute. Indeed, underlying this conflict there is an ongoing struggle between health insurance corporations and those who must pay for health insurance.
As is the case in nearly half the labor disputes in the state, the key issue is the rising cost of health insurance. Non-union workers have seen their coverage erode and have already been forced to pay a larger chunk of their health insurance premiums, but union workers have the leverage to fight back. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a BART strike, which hinged on health insurance benefits, was narrowly averted in July. Health insurance was also at the heart of the grocery strikes last year that lasted 139 days.
But while insurance companies have ramped up premiums by 11 to 14 percent annually over the past several years, far outstripping the other costs of living, they hardly have a scratch on their face. Instead, it is the unions and the management who are left to fight about who’s going to pay for it.
Insurance corporations could be forgiven if the rate increases reflected a genuine increase in the cost of health care. To some extent they do, as insurers shoulder the costs of an older, sicker population and an increasing number of expensive, high- tech treatments. But over a third of the money we pay for health insurance doesn’t even pay for health care — it pays for an expansive bureaucracy of paper-pushers, it pays for the eight-figure salaries of superstar CEOs, and it pays to widen the profit margins.
The cost of health insurance is a cancer on our country. It is growing out of control and sucking the life out of our economy. Health care costs consume more than 15 percent of the national gross domestic product, which means we all have less money to pay for the basic things we need. Health care costs are spawning an epidemic of pain and suffering for those who sacrifice their health to pay the rent, and for the 18,000-plus people who die each year because they cannot afford health care.
Meanwhile, as drivers, passengers and the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors are forced to make real sacrifices, it couldn’t be a better time to be in the health insurance business. Profits are soaring to banner levels. United Health Groups’ gross profits rose to $10 billion in 2004, up $2 billion from the year before, while Wellpoint, which owns Blue Cross, saw its profits climb to $5 billion in 2003, up $800 million from the year before.
If nothing changes, we should expect strikes to become more and more common. We need sweeping reforms to remove this cancer, reforms that not only allow us to control the costs of health care, but that make affordable health care a right for all, whether we’re represented by a union or not.
The city of Santa Cruz is ahead of us on this issue. On April 26, the Santa Cruz City Council unanimously endorsed a resolution in favor of universal health insurance for the state of California. According to the resolution, "the costs of health care to individuals, families, employers, and the public are soaring to unprecedented levels." And at that council meeting, it was Mayor Rotkin who spoke out in praise of universal health care.
Dan Roth is a UCSC graduate student.
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