October 2007 No. 43Table of Contents |
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“Give me your strong, your rich, your brave few yearning to succeed, the best you have that you can do without. Send these, the well-off brazen to me, I lift my iPod beside the ID-encoded door!” Statue of Liberty???
Oops. That didn’t sound right. But it could be the thoughts of many in the current debate about immigrants—or “illegals” as some would say—going on in America today. If that is what some of us think about immigrants, just what do newcomers themselves think about us and the USA? Now That I’m Here is a report from Public Agenda from a survey of 1,000 who came here at least five years ago. It was shaped by focus groups with immigrants and experts.
Here’s what a sample of today’s 37.5 million immigrants in America say about being here:
See www.publicagenda.org/specials/immigration/
immigration.htm for the full report. By the way, here are the accurate last lines from Emma Lazarus' full poem The New Colossus which graces the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Working Mother magazine posted the perks that the 100 Best Companies offer to women with families. “Leading by example,” they give women the programs, choices, and support to shine at work and at home. Here are these firms’ most common features:
See www.workingmother.com/?service=vpage/106 for the complete list and examples of exemplary firms.
Fastest Growing Companies. Eighty-one Hoosier privately-owned businesses made Inc. magazine’s 2007 list of the 5,000 fastest growing. While the majority was in central Indiana, several firms were scattered across the state. See www.inc.com/inc5000 for the full list with profiles on Indiana’s component.
The GM/Chrysler-UAW agreements highlight how employer-paid health insurance for workers may be on the auction block for American companies trying to stay competitive in a global market. The reality—few employees elsewhere have unions or much benefits and pay workers less than in America where labor rights have grown for 150 years.
The auto companies will transfer their retiree health-care liability to trusts run by UAW. The ratified GM plan puts its $51 Billion liability plus another $35 Billion in the trust, freeing it from nearly $5B/year on health care for 423,000 current retirees and their dependents—some 80% more than a decade ago. Details on the Chrysler plan are sketchy but similar.
For GM, in return for no increase in the $28/hour base wage or cost-of-living adjustments, current workers get bonuses over 3 years. New hires come into a two-tier wage system that pays non-production workers half of what those on the assembly line make. High-seniority workers can take early retirement buyouts.
Since the Gallup poll began in 1936, the vast majority of Americans have voiced approval of labor unions, ranging from mid-70% in the mid-1950s to 55% in 1979 and back up to 60% today. Only 9% of Americans are union members, plus 7% have a union spouse or other household member.
Before World War II, health care costs in most industrialized nations were paid for by the government (taxpayers). But in the USA, during the industrialized war, a cap on wage raises was imposed to halt inflation. To keep competitive and attract workers, companies began offering health insurance themselves. In 1950, GM offered to pay 50% of worker healthcare costs, and the universal-healthcare-backing UAW finally concurred. Coverage for retirees began in 1961, and in 1964 GM began paying 100% of healthcare for current and retired workers. Today, the USA is the only industrialized country with most health care paid for by employers.
But that’s changing. Since the early 1980s when 80% of all healthcare coverage was paid for through employer-provided plans, there has been a gradual but steady retreat by employers, until it was only 60% in 2003. American companies are facing the increasing pressure of foreign competitors—not bound by this tradition of employer-paid worker benefits—that are under pricing them in a global marketplace—and often in workplaces down the road from their own facilities.
This erosion of employer-paid health insurance parallels the conversion of defined benefit retirement plans to defined contribution and 401k pension plans.
What’s likely to be next? Not a return to the 1950s, says economist Jack Rasmus, but a choice between “further expansion and entrenchment of personal-HSA [health savings account] plans, in which workers-consumers pay a greater share of total costs and corporations exit in stages from any liability for health care financing, or a return to the idea of a true single payer universal health care system delivered through the Social Security system.” Others may argue.
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