Minneapolis– Citing the Twin Cities’ need to encourage good jobs with health care, U.S. Representative Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Council Member Ralph Remington are calling on two local building owners, U.S. Bancorp and Ameriprise, to do everything they can to encourage security companies to settle a fair contract with the area’s nearly 800 security officers. Also present were Minneapolis Council Members Elizabeth Glidden, Betsy Hodges, Don Samuels, and Gary Schiff.
“Working families in Minnesota need quality health care,” says Ellison. “Building owners in our city have both the ability and the obligation to do more to ensure that workers and their children have a relationship with a doctor, not just an emergency room.”
The move comes as the security officers are announcing that by a 278 to 26 margin, officers voted to reject their employers’ latest contract offer, which would decrease access to affordable health care by demanding that workers pay as much as $1100 a month on family coverage, well beyond what the workers can afford.
“People all over this city are facing tough choices because they don’t have health care,” says James Matias, a member of the security officers’ bargaining committee who has six children without health insurance. “That’s why officers rejected this deal – a family shouldn’t have to worry about going broke if your child gets hurt or sick.”
The results of the vote will likely increase tension between security contractors ABM, Allied Barton, American, Securitas and Viking and the officers, who have gained the support of community leaders concerned about the plight of the uninsured and the underinsured, as well as the overall impact that the lack of health care has on the fiscal well-being of the community. Among the officers’ supporters are local clergy who see the lack of insurance for security officers as a moral problem.
“The companies need to recognize the basic human dignity of these workers and make quality health care affordable to them and their families,” says the Reverend David Wangaard, Bishop’s Associate for the Minneapolis Area Lutheran Synod. “A person’s health should not be left to chance, particularly given the great wealth of this city.”
On February 25, security officers held a one-day strike—the first-ever of its kind in the area—to send a message to their employers that families need to have access to medical care and life-saving prescription drugs. The security officers, who have been at the bargaining table for nearly four months, have been working without a contract since January 1.