Well once again, SEPTA (bus, subway and trolley service in Philadelphia) threatens to go on strike. Their last strike was over 5 years ago and lasted a few weeks...and people were not happy.
I'm sure there are various issues involved, but the sticking points seem to be that SEPTA workers don't want to have to pay 20% of their health insurance premiums (vs. nothing now) and that the proposed contract also doesn't give any raises for 2 years.
Leaving the raises aside, I want to look at the health insurance, since this came up in the CA grocery workers' strike as well. One of the labor leaders was asked something to the effect of "everyone else is paying more for health insurance these days, isn't this just part of the trend?" to which she said "we don't follow the trend, we make the trend."
From what I understand, outside of such unionized jobs, there are very few jobs where health insurance premiums are 100% company paid. Mr. JMS, who is out shopping for an attorney job, (anyone know of openings for an associate doing defense work in Philly...) said that he noticed that some law firms are expecting the attorneys to pay for part of the premiums now, where it used to be default that the firm paid all the premiums.
Far from inciting people into thinking "yeah, the unions are right, nobody should have to pay for insurance premiums" I've mostly heard around here things like "I'm already paying 50% of the premiums and they're making a fuss over paying 20%? Who do these people think they are?"
So...what do you think? If you're paying for a part of your insurance premiums, does this sort of talk make you want to be a rabble rouser or want to tell the unions to join the rest of us?