Editorials
Contents Volume CVI, Number I 1 commonweal Correspondence ...
...and low-cost regular medical help...
...Contents Volume CVI, Number I 1 commonweal Correspondence 322 Editorials 323 A speaker on Ireland: Desmond Fisher 324 Memories and hopes: Rodger Van Allen 326 Acknowledging a debt: Frank Getlein 328 Of women & bishops: Abigail McCarthy329 NEW FRONTIERS The leadership we need: John Jay Hughes 331 From nation to factions: John J. Donohue 335 Stage: Gerald Weales 338 FOR LABOR Screen: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...The new debate has just a chance of being more tered by private insurance companies...
...Nor has labor been rewarded for its recent efforts...
...Telephone: been completely unable to organize Michelin, despite the fact that its wage rates (212) MU 3-2042...
...Less well known but a good example of one of organized labor's major Poetry: John Fandel problems is the Michelin tire plant in Greenville, S.C...
...they may well prove far less A debate is beginning on national health insurance...
...339 G FORGE MEANY, AFL-CIO president, was hospitalized recently for treatment of Disco decadents, punk poseurs: bursitis and for the first time in 20 years missed a meeting of the federation's Gerry O'Sullivan 341 executive council...
...10016...
...into such judgments...
...would introduce...
...The French company is the world's largest tire manufacturer and Woodrow (Paris) has been turning out tires in South Carolina since 1973, strictly on a non-union basis...
...This was done, obvirational than past ones, at least if it escapes submersion in the ously enough, for political reasons: to defuse the tremendous swampy question, Will Teddy, or Won't Teddy...
...South Carolina and South Korea gust, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madi- both offer the same advantage: cheap labor-there's no difference...
...Not many years ago, labor exercised real power inside the Democratic party...
...The problem therefore is essentially one of institutional arrangements, not of personal trust in a kindly GP...
...today it is down to just over 20 percent...
...In disturbs the public...
...Again...
...foreign, $22...
...For our part, we would not bet too much on any move toward retirement by Mr...
...that power is not gone, but it is today seriously weakened...
...For multinational ture and the Arts, is published biweekly, except companies today," as a European trade union organizer told the Washington Post's monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and Au- Dan Morgan, "there is a world market for labor...
...whether or not he steps down from his job, labor's top leaders should be thinking of Brecht: Wallace Fowlie 347 ways and means of breathing new life into the American labor movement...
...Yearly subscriptions...
...discussed...
...Critics who say the labor movement is in the doldrums have a point, however, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service: Gene Bell-Villada 346 although it is not necessarily fair to blame this state of affairs on George Meany...
...We think not, and incentives that can turn good intentions as well as selfish ones unions must play a leading part in introducing a social criterion against the best interest of those in need...
...It may promise greater efficiency-there is a debate increasing appreciation of the fact that the national health insurance debate has little to do with Big Bureaucracy sticking MARGU...
...Are the Ameri- the public also recognizes that this outcome is due neither to can people really satisfied to let such narrow economic consid- accident nor to exceptional greed but to a system of economic erations solely decide these critical issues...
...Over the years American unions have tended to stick may cost you more in the long-run...
...and it is in- INSURANCE creasingly aware of the role of the pharmaceutical industry and other purveyors of advanced medical technologies in determining what kind of health care is available to whom and at L what price...
...On the other hand, comprehensive health plans like the one A PLAN FOR HEALTH .. . Senator Kennedy has announced may not only be fairer in extending benefits more widely...
...The costly and medically ineffective distortion of current medicine .would be backed by federal dollars...
...Staff: Linda F. Kayler, Harriette Balsky Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Michelin employs 3500 workers in that state, and it plans another plant employing Publisher...
...The present spending still leaves tens of millions unable great contribution to industrial democracy...
...Both labor's concerns and the public Perhaps this growing sophistication about cost and inceninterest must be taken into account in decisions like those taken tives will even lead the public to apply to medical care what it at Youngstown, and this will require a larger, not a smaller role already knows about household expense: that buying cheap for labor...
...Meany...
...With the United Rubber Correspondents: Brian Wicker (Great Bri- Workers confronting Uniroyal and the other unionized tire companies, this is a good tain), Desmond Fisher (Dublin), Alain time to look at it...
...The public deals with hospitals (which account for twice the amount of the medical care budget going for physi- NATIONAL NERLTN cians' services) and with insurance companies...
...mixed, good news and bad...
...He did not get where he is by giving up The Illusion of Technique: Louis Dupre 343 easily, and he is stubborn enough not to want to give either Jimmy Carter or his Sexual Morality: Eugene Fontinell 344 opponents in the ranks of the AFL-CIO the satisfaction of seeing him step down...
...Special two-year rate: are substantially lower than those of rubber companies with union contracts...
...Staff Despite its crucial role in Democratic victories in the last two elections, labor was Editor: James O'Gara unable to push through legislation it considered vital to its interests...
...Columnists: John Garvey, Frank Getlein, In the South the notorious example of the J.P...
...Senator Kennedy has modified his earlier vored the notion and the AFL feared it as smacking of govern- proposals so that a large part of the program would be adminisment control...
...according to Mr...
...And it is not only the relentlessly time when developments such as those at Youngstown make it growing portion of our GNP devoted to medical care that obvious that American labor is facing new challenges...
...The public knows that medical care is already an affair of large, complex, interacting institutions, with their attendant bureaucracies...
...Single copy, $I...
...Its investment of $400 to $500 million provides jobs in an area which badly needs them...
...More and more one criterion and one alone: company profits...
...Edward S. Skillin 1500 people in Alabama soon...
...But, as the closings to pay bills or relegated to second-rate care, while other milof the steel mills at Youngstown demonstrate, much more lions are the dubious beneficiaries of unnecessary operations, needs to be done...
...A Review of Public Affairs, Litera- eliminates jobs in the older industrial regions of the North...
...political power of the insurance carriers by cutting them in on The first reason for this improvement is the public's ever the pie...
...These closings, with the resultant mass duplicate tests of marginal value, and high-technology efforts unemployment and community disruption, were decided on by that cure (sometimes) but do not heal or care...
...costly than either continuing the present system or modifying it Contrary to a Newsweek story, which only reflected a general in relatively minor ways...
...guaranteeing hospitals, physicians, and the developers and With more Youngstowns looming in the future, it is more marketers of medical technology the full payment of excepimperative than ever that labor and the community at large tionally high individual bills, it would only further skew have a say in such sudden-death decisions...
...Nor is $35...
...It is the overwhelming reality of medical care That is the situation organized labor confronts, and this at a as we have itt right now...
...With far Working for Capitalism: Robert Howard 348 less people working, union labor at one time made up 30 percent of the wage force in Saints Alive!: Joseph Cunneen 349 this country...
...foreign, $39...
...Michelin an isolated example...
...Of course sophistication about cost belief, national health insurance is not "an idea first proposed has to reach the point of recognizing that cost is cost whether it during FDR's New Deal" but dates back to the period before is paid through the governmgnt or through Blue Cross and World War I -when the American Medical Association fa- private insurers...
...Whether George medicine in the direction of concentrated, high-technology Meany retires this year or not, organized labor in the United practice, to the neglect of preventive care, early intervention States must begin to think in larger, more ambitious terms...
...ES its nose into an intimate "doctor-patient relationship...
...So far labor has son Ave., New York, N.Y...
...important as these are, they still tend to stop ance plans like the one sponsored by Senator Russell Long...
...and Canada, $20...
...At the same time this foreign investment exploits cheap labor and Commonweal...
...Talk of Executive Editor: Peter Steinfels labor-management cooperation is fading away, big business is taking a more Associate Editor Raymond A. Schroth aggressive anti-union stance, and plants all over the industrial Northeast are fleeing Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson to the unorganized South...
...By short of life-and-death decisions like those at Youngstown...
...Stevens Company has been much Abigail McCarthy, Thomas Powers Movies: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Absence of the 84-year-old labor leader will undoubtedly give new life to rumors that he may retire this year instead of seeking reelection at the Books AFL-CIO's biennial convention this fall...
...That is the objection many to important but smaller issues like wages and hours, seniority economists make, for instance, to catastrophic health insurand pensions...
...The second reason for a better debate is the general realization that "high cost" is not a danger national health insurance Commonweal: 324...
...it is the fact that this expenditure returns myriad ways, from wages and working conditions to simple neither what the public wants nor reasonably needs in health human dignity, organized labor in the United States has made a care...
...Morgan, of the 420 manufacturing facilities in Greenville County, only two companies, and these firms with fewer 8 June 1979: 323 than 300 employees, have union representation...
...Michelin's role in the South is...
Vol. 106 • June 1979 • No. 11
