Colo. union outlines ambitious goals

Rachel Brand, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Mitch Ackerman, the 38-year-old president of the Service Employees International Union Local 105 in Colorado, has been fighting to maintain ground for as long as he can remember.

Now he sees a tremendous opportunity with a Democratic-controlled state legislature and a Democratic governor to advance the union agenda.

Is this a historic moment?

Yep. I was not alive when the state was in Democratic hands.

Did this election prove that voters support the union agenda?

The union agenda is to turn around the economic free-fall for working people. That was a lot of the driver of what happened on Election Day. The division of wealth in this country has hit historic proportions. CEO pay is skyrocketing, corporate profits are skyrocketing, but we're having a hard time making ends meet if you have to work for a living.

What would you like to see happen in the legislature?

Our goal is to change the lives of working people in Colorado, to turn around the precipitous decline in the standard of living for working people.

Hasn't that already begun to happen?

We were very excited to help raise the minimum wage. We donated money and did a lot of in-kind support. We knocked on 10,000 doors in metro Denver.

So that fight is over?

The minimum wage fight is won to a certain point, but it's still pretty difficult to raise a family on $6.85 an hour. So there's a conversation about how to create quality jobs in Colorado that pay enough to raise a family on, that provide quality health insurance and a secure retirement.

What issues need to be addressed?

We want every man, woman and child in the state to have access to health care.

SEIU is not dogmatic. We want universal health care, but it doesn't need to be single payer. It should be financed fairly between employers, the government and individuals.

We need to make health care less expensive, but once we do that, everyone has to play.

How do you make health care less expensive?

Colorado has one of the most profitable hospital markets in the country. It's a very consolidated market, where the hospitals have used their power not to create efficiencies and bring down costs.

The first step is, let the consumers and government understand where the money is going. Pricing, quality data and staffing data need to be transparent. People who are in charge of buying health care should have all the information at their fingertips.

What did hospitals say when you introduced the transparency bill last year?

They said they already reported this and it was too onerous. But if you report it already, why is it too onerous?

We also supported a bill to reduce prescription drug costs in Medicaid through pooled purchasing.

Expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program is one easy thing we can do to expand kids' coverage.

We would support a bill to make hospitals disclose their nurse staffing ratios. We supported a California law that set up minimum staffing ratios.

One of the factors hurting U.S. wage growth is globalization. How do you deal with it?

The bigger question is the jobs that are replacing those going overseas pay a lot less.

GM used to be the largest employer in America, and they paid good wages, good health care and a good pension. Now Wal-Mart is the largest employer in America, and their business model is driving the train: Pay as little as you can to workers, suppliers, manufacturers.

There's no reason that Wal-Mart can't pay a living wage with secure retirement and health care. That's why rebuilding the labor movement is the best thing we can do to rebuild the middle class.

When some people hear "labor union" they think of Rust Belt jobs and middle-aged men. How can labor revamp its image?

Those perceptions are misplaced in some ways. But we also need to reinvent ourselves, which is why we're more open to partnering with employers.

Change to Win polled a huge number of working Americans. We found out that no matter what terms you use, what people want is, in fact, the union agenda. They want a voice on their work, to do jobs they're proud of, and they want access to the American dream.