600 Union Members Demonstrate Against Doctors Contracting Practices That Drive Down Area Standards for Working Families
The following is a press release from the Massachusetts Building Trades Council released on March 18th, 2009.
Six Hundred Union Members Demonstrate Against Doctors Contracting Practices That Drive Down Area Standards For Working Families On The North Shore.
Six hundred union members gathered early this morning at the site of a Medical Office Building under construction on Endicott Street in Danvers to protest against the use of contractors that do not conform to community standards.
Non-area standard contractors are being used to complete a medical office building in Danvers that members of the North Shore Physicians Group will occupy. There have been questions raised about whether these contractors provide health insurance coverage to their workers.
The first rule of medicine is "Do no harm." When you hire contractors that do not provide health insurance to their workers, they harm everyone on the North Shore who has to pay higher premiums to make up the difference.
Massachusetts unions negotiate quality health insurance benefits for hundreds of thousands of individuals. Building trades unions alone provide some of the most comprehensive health insurance coverage available to over 200,000 individuals. They are proud of the coverage they provide and view it as a responsibility.
Apparently, the North Shore Physicians Group doesn’t seem to care if the cost of health insurance is the determining factor in who wins a bid.
“These doctors need to know that we won’t let them drive down the standard of living for residents of the North Shore,” said Jeff Sullivan, President of the North Shore Building Trades Council.
“This building is being built with our health insurance dollars and they should be using contractors that provide union health insurance benefits,” said Jeff Crosby, President of the North Shore Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO.
“These doctors have no problem sending ever-increasing medical bills to union health insurance plans and turning away patients without health insurance. But when it comes to the contractors building their own offices, it’s how low can you go and we don’t care if you have health insurance.” Said Frank Callahan, President of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council. "Our members pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year into the health care system, that ultimately pays for these projects. It is unconscionable for doctors who profit off our health-care dollars to use contractors that don't provide decent health care to their employees. They should be ashamed of themselves."
“This is not just an attack on the Building Trades, it is an attack on every union member and every working family on the North Shore.” Said Robert Haynes, President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Haynes promised to bring this to the attention of the entire Massachusetts AFL-CIO at the federation’s Executive Council meeting tomorrow.
The Massachusetts Building Trades Council) is 89-year-old organizations dedicated to helping working people improve their quality of life. We are comprised of 74 member locals representing over 75,000 working men and women across the state.