It is a union protest about the hospital hiring non-union workers and about contractors not providing health insurance for workers. Their beef is far too simple and does not take in a far bigger picture.
Even as I drive around the area there is a gold rush type boom of health care facilities on the North Shore. Pharmacies, assisted living housing, Mass General and Beverly Hospital expansions. We must be a very sick and aging population and two it must be very profitable and three a government mandate of having to have insurance guarantees an influx of money.
Let’s go to Maryland.
http://www.newsmax.com/medicin…
Or Texas
http://www.seekingalpha.com/ar…
And note the dwindling functions of what is and what is not “covered” expenses in these new health “insurance” plans.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news…
I have a $5000 “plan” and so far it looks like they suck. Line item denials may be resolved only after half hour bitch sessions in automated phone tree hell.
Lasthorseman, what the heck are you talking about? Let’s get the facts correct before we take out the broadbrush!
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p>The extraordinary new Beverly Hospital at Danvers which opened this month replaces Beverly Hospital’s old Hunt Health Center in Danvers. It is state of the art, consumer friendly and much more assessible for Danvers and the surrounding communities.
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p>Beverly Hospital does hire union workers. So you are misinformed. But, a hospital does not hire construction workers to build facilities, the Contractor who submits a proposal and wins the bid hires its own site trades workers.
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p>The contractor that won the bid to build the new Danvers facility does IN FACT provide health insurance benefits to its workers as does Beverly Hospital and the entire Northeast Health Systems organization it is part of.
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p>The IBEW was not hired by that construction contractor because their wage and benefit demands (for the exact same amount and scope of work) would have run the cost of construction through the roof.
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p>The IBEW may want to throw sour grapes (and misinformation) toward the Beverly Hospital but it’s misdirected and not really fair or deserved.
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p>When the Big Dig was roaring millions of dollars into union coffers and jobs were plentiful in the trades, the unions were pretty quiet and did not wildly attack anyone who was building anything. BUT NOW, the Dig Dollar spiggot has been turned of, the residential construction market has collapsed and the trade unions are turning to any local institution to force them to pay exhorbitant prices for construction labor.
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p>Driving up the cost of health care? Building construction and maintenance are part of the cost of health care delivery. It all adds up.
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p>Unions should take a harder look at what they are paying their own leaders…the salaries, benefits and perqs…the average union member is carrying those costs. Maybe they should keep that blow-up rat right under the IBEW Hall…so the members can see who is really feeding at the trough they pay into.
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Beverly Hospital. What I am attempting to point out here are the more Machiavellian themes involved in western medicine. The 30,000% profit margins of prescription drugs. The concept of mandatory insurance and the concepts of mandatory vaccinations. I am looking into the future of health care in a dying empire and I don’t like what I see. Yes you can say I have a radically different worldview.
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p>They had a perfectly functioning hospital in Danvers, Hunt Memorial however that must have been just too old and obsolete. While I actually do agree the union is doing the sour grapes thing and I don’t support the mafia style corruption inherent in any union project I thought this incident might be of some use in pointing out some of the Satanically inspired evil that is the current medical establishment. We are becoming the most medicated society on earth and I do think it’s mostly for profit. I have seen internet reports of 140 year olds in Japan still living active lifestyles. Pure water and a diet of fish and stuff.
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p>Pick up any popular magazine and tally the ads for drugs along with the number two font legal disclaimers saying taking this may cause liver failure, heart palpitations, etc. That and FM radio routinely advertizes for medical guinea pig type medical trails. I take this as not a good sign.
I am starting to look for a good and honorable death and not an artificially prolonged extra 20 years of drooling on myself because it profits someone.
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p>We don’t have steel mills, we don’t have shoe manufacturing, we don’t have electronics yet we do have medical left as an industry. Makes a dam good weapon of mass destruction these bio-safety level 4 labs.
Let’s get to a couple of basic facts. Beverly Hospital is building a project. They are paying for the construction. They hire and pay the General Contractor. That means that Beverly Hospital management can direct the GC to bid the work to responsible subcontractors who provide health insurance, pay community standard wages and classify their employees as employees (paying workers comp insurance, unemployment and other taxes) instead of calling them “independent contractors”.
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p>It is an old shell game in the construction industry – the project owner says it was the GC’s decision, the GC says the owner told us too hire this way.
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p>IBEW Local #103 began leafleting because the GC (going on memory here: Day-con, Da-con) hired a non-union contractor. Most construction unions know the players in their trades and document their pay and benefit packages.The union’s point was about hospital standards and I believe the leaflet noted the names and cost of mal-practice cases by doctors associated with Beverly Hospital to highlight its’ issue of standards.
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p>The irony of a hospital hiring contractors and sub-contractors that fail to provide health insurance is amazing. These workers then go to hospital emergency rooms for care, are paid for by taxpayers and responsible contractors through the state’s uncompensated care pool. Every budget we get to hear hospital administrators complain about the cost of “free care” and then watch them hire companies who don’t provide access to health insurance.
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p>IBEW Local #103 took Beverly Hospital management to task under it’s First Amendment right. It took them to task on the specific issue of standards. The issue doesn’t discount all the good the hospital (more importantly its medical staff) does but ask legit questions about manangment’s decision process.
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p>And please – the old union bosses make to much money attack is so lame. Union salary and benefits are set in the constitution and bylaws of the organization. They are reported yearly to the Department of Labor. Union officers are elected in a secret ballot vote process under the jurisdiction of the US Government at least every three years.
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p>If there was that much transparency and democracy on Hospital Boards and within health care companies I bet the cost of health care would be far less.
Your arguments would be compelling if they were based on fact. But, a quick call to check it out proves otherwise.
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p>IN FACT, Interstate Electrical Services Corporation, the electrical contractor hired for the Beverly Hospital project, has provided all its employees health insurance and benefits for over 40 years, that is not only equal to, but exceeds the benefits provided by IBEW.
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p>As for wages, it appears that IESC pay scale is equal to or exceeds 87% of those set in US construction industry.
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p>So IBEW is really off-base with its untrue assertion that Beverly Hospital would hire electrical contractors that did not get health coverage… that’s just misinformation designed to deceive the public.
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p>Call IESC in Billerica and check it out yourself: 978-667-5200.
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p>I think IBEW can compete with the non-union shops. They are better trained, more proficient and add value to any project. I do not think that it helps the union cause for them to be employing intimidation and misinformation tactics that serve only to reinforce negative stereotypes of unions that so many are working to overcome. The silly blow-up rat that they pull out is such a throwback. If they want to compete they can do better than a rat that eats only sour grapes.