Rich Trumka

Rich Trumka is the unopposed candidate for the presidency of the AFL-CIO, and it bothers him that young people aren’t unionized at the same rates as older people. Appearing at the Center for American Progress on Monday, Trumka talked about how young people are economically worse off than they were a decade ago. Now, the AFL-CIO is starting to work with young people in new ways. Trumka sat down with Campus Progress after the event to talk about what needs to happen with health care reform, why more young people aren’t in unions, and how to get money out of politics.

You’ve been making some strong statements about health care reform—saying that organized labor won’t support a bill without a public option, which can be very important for young people who take jobs without health insurance. What needs to happen in the health care debate now, especially after the passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy?

You’ll never have health insurance reform and decent prices without a public option because 94 percent of the markets out there are highly concentrated. A public option actually competes with them, makes them become more efficient, and drives their prices down. Young people need to start talking more visibly—in every way that they can—saying that the option is important.

This is about politics. This isn’t about meeting the needs of the American public or the American people. One American declares bankruptcy every 30 seconds because of medical bills. Every minute we waste—two Americans, their dreams are shattered.

Young people are likely to be uninsured, mostly because they can’t afford individual insurance, although some say it’s because we think we’re “invincible.” How would reform help us as young people?

Your instincts are right. The study we released shows that young people do not have health care not because they don’t want to. There’s a small percentage that just say, “I don’t need it,” but mostly they can’t get it from their employer and they can’t afford to buy it. That’s the vast, vast majority of Americans at that age.

Right now the insurance companies have very little incentive to come up with creative new management plans for serious illness because they’re afraid that if they do, they’ll attract those serious illnesses and their costs will go up. The public option has every incentive to get the new treatments and regimens [in place] because they can help people get better more quickly. So it’ll force the insurance companies to be innovative as well and come up with better treatment plans and more innovative plans that will have a better outcome than we get right now. It won’t be about saving money; it’ll be about actually having a positive outcome from the health treatment, which is important. And it’s important for every American—not just young people, but every American.

Young people often take jobs that don’t have benefits and those jobs fall outside the realm of traditional union jobs—

Sure, they don’t have a choice.

What do you think really needs to change for young people to enter into organized labor?

First of all, some of it’s us. Some of it’s us opening the doors, reaching out, educating, and bringing more young people in. I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job of that in the past, and I think we’re going to focus on that and do a much better job in the future. The second thing I think we can do for young people is actually create an economy that really does work. There are apprenticeship programs that people can come into and get a career path that will give you good benefits and good wages for a lifetime. When the economy is contracting, there are fewer jobs. So we need to get the economy up and running.

The other thing we can do is take those jobs—and young people can help us with this—that are sort of dead-end jobs and make them into middle-class jobs. You know, I came out of the mining industry. I’m a third generation coal miner. When my grandfather started in the mine, coal mining jobs weren’t a job that people looked for. They were terrible; they were dangerous; they paid you nothing. We made those into middle-class jobs. We did that with a number of other industries and we can do that again. It’s going to take some willingness on our part to change. You may have a temp worker (or freelancer) who has 25 employers in a month. We have to figure out how to get to all 25 of them. We can’t use our old model.

There’s a thing called the vine benefit health care plan: You can have a number of employers pay into that plan and you can get portability so that no matter which employer you go to, you’re still covered and you [get to] keep your plan. We did that in co-ops in the mine workers in the 1940s. That’s a solution—just one example—of what we can do to bring in and help more young people.

There’s a stereotype of organized labor as being made up of people without a college education. What needs to change to remove that stereotype, especially in terms of college affordability?

There’s actually a lot more we can do to give people college credit. Take the angle that I came out of. I came out of a mine workers tradition and I negotiated a mine workers education fund. Each one of the employers put 8 cents an hour into a mineworkers’ education fund. If you were unemployed, you could send you, your spouse, and your kids to school. The next time around I negotiated an increase so it would cover the spouses and children of active miners. If you’re unemployed, the first thing you can do to break that cycle is to continue your children’s education so they don’t get sucked up in the same swirl.

As a young progressive, it’s frustrating to see a record number of progressives—more than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime—in public office and yet have real reforms seem so out of reach. What would you say to other young people that feel similar frustrations?

Don’t give up. The more true progressives we elect, the easier the job gets. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to have a walk-over. What it means is when we elect them we got a chance to get something done. The other side’s not going to quit.

The system’s [also] polluted with money—money that actually stops a lot of people from doing what’s right. Our job is to push them—to push them to do what they wanted to do in their head or their heart but perhaps don’t have the political courage to do.

Kay Steiger is editor of Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter.

Kay Steiger is the editor of CampusProgress.org.

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