Main Street

A Right, Not a Gift

Marriott Hotels has “suspended measuring hours worked to maintain health care benefits” because in the recession, too many employees were falling short of the hours needed to keep their benefits. Ezra Klein’s response to this news is absolutely right:

That’s a good, humane policy. But in being the exception to the rule, its very existence is an excellent argument against the employer-based health-care system. Access to health care should not be dependent on the kindness of your employer. It should not be dependent on the value that the marketplace attaches to a worker’s precise set of skills. It should not be dependent on choosing an industry that doesn’t go through wrenching change and downsizing 20 years after you first entered it (as happened to any number of manufacturing workers or, for that matter, California state employees).

As it happens, this is an important argument for unions in the workplace as well as for health care reform: Fair wages and safe working conditions shouldn’t be dependent on the hope you have a nice boss.

These things should be rights, not gifts.

Tags: Health Care, unions