Boston Janitorial Strike Highlights Debate on Health Care for Working Poor

A labor dispute between janitors and cleaning companies in Boston highlights the larger debate over who should offer health care insurance for the working poor, the Boston Globe reports. Members of Boston Local 254 of the Service Employees International Union are striking to gain health care coverage for part-time workers. Under the current contract, which expired in September, only full-time janitors receive employer-funded health care coverage and are able to purchase coverage for family members. Part-time workers, who comprise 75% of the union's work force, do not qualify for employer-sponsored coverage. While many large employers insure their full-time work force, employers dependent on low-paid or part-time workers often let publicly funded programs cover their employees, according to the Globe. "Employers tend to like part-time workers because the rates of pay are less and the benefit cost is less,'' William Griffin, president of Seattle-based Cleaning Consultant Services, said. Andrew Dreyfus, president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, added, "There remains a myth that people without insurance aren't working, which simply isn't true. The question is, what can we do and what should we do to provide health coverage for low-wage workers?" Publicly funded care for the around Boston-area 8,000 janitors and their families without health insurance costs the state and federal governments and area hospitals $12.3 million a year, according to Ethan Kaplan, a graduate economics student at the University of California at Berkeley. A majority of janitors want but cannot find full-time jobs, Kaplan said. However, cleaning companies contend that many part-time janitors want to keep their job hours because they have other full-time jobs with benefits. Under the new contract proposal, the cleaning companies are offering a "substantia[l] increase" in pay for full-time and part-time workers and a subsidy to full-time workers who buy family coverage, but no expansion of health care coverage to part-time workers (Blanton, Boston Globe, 10/17).