On a small bulletin board in my office I have posted a full page ad from a magazine. The photo captures a smartly dressed man, briefcase in tow, standing on a busy street in a downtown area.
He holds up a sign much like a protester or a street preacher might placard about.
The message on his sign is bold, simple and right to the point:
"Collaborate or DIE"
Ironic, don't you think? At a time when radical individualism enjoys what may be an unsurpassed heyday in our culture, the prophets of the world of profit call us to rethink how we are living.
The message made its way to every major front page in the nation last Wednesday with General Motors' grim announcement that it would phase out 25,000 jobs by the end of 2008. Many of these jobs will involve retirement. Still, the point is they will not be replaced as GM seeks to stabilize its core business.
Interesting that one of the challenges GM faces and that drives their decision on workforce reduction is the increasing costs associated with health insurance for its employees. GM spends approximately $1,500 per auto unit produced on health care costs for its workforce.
The layoff represents about 22% of the auto makers hourly workforce.
The nation needs GM to survive. GM provides health insurance coverage to 1.1 million Americans and is the nation's largest private sector provider.
We are arriving at a moment in our national life when large corporations like GM will likely begin to ask why we haven't made more progress on establishing a national health insurance plan like every other industrialized nation in the world.
With jobs being outsourced daily across the country and the costs of health insurance and health care escalating rapidly, it is clear new approaches must be formulated and put into place.
The economic forces affecting American business interests obviously impact low-income residents of our inner cities.
We need to find a new way.
Collaboration comes to mind.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
3 hours ago
4 comments:
Your blog is so refreshing! I have no idea how I stumbled here - but I bookmarked it last time so I could come back.
I just heard the GM announcement tonight. As I heard the man wrapping an untidy event in a pretty bow, my mind drifts to the people.
No insurance is awful. People that have it don't know how much it does until it's gone. It provides security, peace of mind, and a promise. People without health insurance have no promise and none of the other stuff either.
Socialized healthcare didn't sound like a bad plan to me. Some people think it removes freedom from the people. I think it gives people, that currently have no insurance, the freedom of peace to know that if their baby needs medical attention - she will get it. It provides freedom the poor have yet to see...
GM is an interesting study. The auto industry has certainly changed shape, economics wise, in the last decade or so. It has become a slim margin market, so every penny worth of cost has a huge impact to the bottom line. Couple that with a heavy reliance on union labor, whose only focus is maximizing what they can get out of the company while minimizing what they put in, and you have a serious corporate ulcer on your hands. I'm not certain about the details behind this downsizing, but I did read an article about how the health care costs are one of the most crippling costs behind a union contract, since the laborers don't share in the premiums like many of us salaried folks do. Guess it got to a point that the company could no longer bear the burden, or at least that helped force the decision. Massive changes like this aren't driven by a single factor.
You should provide asprin with your blog since you always cause people to think.
Some of the more pressing issues we face, and will for the next couple of decades, are social security, medicare/healthcare for seniors, and/or universal/socialized healthcare. What's the "right" answer? What does it cost? Those may sound like cold, dollars & sense questions, but they are relevant to the debate. If you could provide all of this coverage at the current tax rate (without increasing the burden), you would probably see the opposition wane somewhat. Universal care would never work at the current cost structure, which I think is what you're saying -- fix the model, and make it work for everyone.
It's hard for me to try to shift out of my bitter perspective, in which I feel overtaxed already, and entertain the thought what might be necessary to fix this monster.
"The economic forces affecting American business interests obviously impact low-income residents of our inner cities."
They also affect middle-income residents of small towns. I'm a CofC preacher, and my wife watches our children. We make too much money to get Medicaid but too little to afford private health insurance. So we're among those millions of Americans who are uninsured. Something is badly broken when it comes to health care, and I pray that it will be fixed soon.
Milton, thanks for your personal comment. I see this issue as a matter of faith, values and spirituality. As we pray for solutions, we must also begin to act, organize and advocate for justice. We need new leadership among our leaders, even those who constantly claim to be "led by their faith in Jesus." I think James has something to say about how faith is really shown. When he wrote he spoke of fair wages and open seating in the church. If he were writing today, I expect he would include health care issues and "Christian politicians" and their actual record on compassion and fairness/justice.
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