Why I can't take unions seriously

It's because of decisions like this:

Roughly half the workers at Tillamook County Creamery Association went on strike because the dairy cooperative wants them pay a portion of their health insurance premiums.

Teamsters Local 58 employees at the cheese plant currently pay nothing for health insurance. The union represents about 260 production, packaging, cold storage, transportation and other workers.

"We've worked very hard for them to help their company grow and met every production need," said Tomi Dressel, 52, who has worked at Tillamook for almost 30 years. "They've made nothing but multimillion-dollar profits in the last five years, and now they're just kind of snubbing us."

Tillamook has proposed that workers, who earn an average of nearly $15 an hour, receive raises of roughly 3 percent a year for three years, but also pay at least 5 percent of their health care premiums. Workers feel the two facets basically cancel each other out, leaving them with little or no gain.

In a prepared statement Wednesday, the company said its health care costs had doubled since 2000, to about $850 a worker each month.

The cooperative sells more than 100 million pounds of cheese a year nationally as well as milk and other dairy products. Its dairy sales in 2003 were $262 million.

(Gasp!) The employer wants them to pay five flippin' percent of their healthcare costs? Say it ain't so!

They're essentially correct, of course, in their concern that the additional healthcare costs will negate any raise. I figure 5 percent of the average healthcare premium is slightly more than $40, and the average worker will see about a $55 monthly raise after taxes.

The healthcare costs of my company have increased an average of 15 percent every year. To cover my business partner, his wife and son, as well as me and my two daughters, costs us more than $1,300 a month (my wife is covered by her employer). And that's not even counting co-pays, which are running at 20 percent. (By the way, my partner and I gave ourselves a 3.3 percent raise last year.)

Maybe if these unionized workers paid a portion, just a tiny fraction, of their healthcare costs, they'd have a better understanding of the challenges involved in paying for healthcare. Maybe if they feel the pain of a 3 percent COLA vs. a 15 percent healthcare premium increase, they might have a little more compassion for business owners across the country who are trying to pay for out-of-control costs and still reward their employees with decent salaries without pricing their products out of the market.

But then again, maybe they might remain stuck in their alternate version of reality, where the wealthy, evil business owner is trying to milk the common man for everything he can get, and the employees are all scraping by because of their employers' greed.