The Gift of Labor

Let’s call her Judy. She lost her job due to the decline in business of her employer. The facts were honest and understandable. Her employer offered her a part-time job doing most of the same things she did before with a 38% cut in hours, from 40 to 25 hours per week. Not surprisingly this new job included no benefits – health, vacation, holidays, or pension. Judy’s company told her that if her hours had dropped below 50% she would be eligible for 10 weeks severance under company policy due to the extreme nature of such a cut. However, since the cut was less she was eligible for nothing if she didn’t take the part-time job and only a small prorated severance (equal to less than 2 weeks) if she took the job. The interesting and blaringly omitted fact was that with the elimination of benefits her actual compensation had dropped 60% between the old and new positions. Nice deal for the employer, to force her out without cost while pretending to be magnanimous. This little story, which is entirely true, points up a shell game that the American working population can’t seem to get; benefits are compensation, not employer largesse.

It’s an accident of history that American workers have evolved to view benefits as some kind of magical foundation associated with the act of working for somebody else. So much so that when employers don’t offer benefits an employee often feels the job is somehow not whole. There is an almost compulsive desire to keep looking for jobs that offer “benefits” (notably health benefits) over those that just pay money. The negotiated Affordable Care Act feeds this illusion by continuing to implant the employer as the primary conduit in the delivery of health care in America, assuring that it will be anything but “affordable”.

The employer has less problem with understanding the realities. To the employer the expense of benefits is treated no differently on the balance sheet than ordinary wages paid. They hold the line (or try to hold the line) on costs by managing the benefits, such as deferring increasing medical premiums to their employees, or not hiring substitutes for workers away from their jobs. Such maneuvers can be inefficient, and the bureaucracy of administering it (especially health care) can be daunting, certainly for small businesses. The glue that keeps it all together is the Tax Code (Federal and most states). The problems this arrangement creates for health care in the US are mammoth, but that’s another topic altogether. The point of this essay is, of course…the Church. Did I say Church??

Yes, the Church, and in the case of this discussion – the Catholic Church. It is up in arms against the Federal Government for, as it perceives it, intrusion into religious freedom. Catholics, for which I am one, have a paradoxical deal going on with their faith. They have their Christian religion and they have their Church, each vying for a piece of the parishioner’s devotion. The supposed attack on the Catholic Church, which has made dandy headlines during the past week, has to do with, of course… sex. Okay, it has to do with health plan inclusion of contraceptives, but when do contraceptives not involve sex? Therein lays the paradox for the world’s Catholics. Because they are human and sexual (and don’t want an endless number of children, with or without spouses) they are universally comfortable with contraceptives as part of their religious faith. On the other hand they respectfully embrace the traditional aspects of their Church (which just happens to be run by a bunch of celibate men). The whole issue would be a highly entertaining farce if it weren’t for the fact that Conservatives and some progressive Catholics have brought it up as a government intrusion on religious rights. That’s where the lie starts, which gets us back to the subject of benefits.

The Obama Administration, by its requiring all employers to abide by the new health care law, is not telling Catholics (or anyone else for that matter) that they have to buy and use contraceptives. Even the critics of the Administration won’t say that, although they imply it. The Catholic Church appears to be up in arms over this supposed infringement on their faith because the benefits they provide to their employees violate their faith. They apparently feel they are being forced to pay for something that breaks with their traditions. Well, horse-poopie to that!! They haven’t, nor would they pay a cent toward it.

As pointed out above, the benefits provided to any employee, including the employees of religious organizations are compensation to those employees, not gifts from the employer. The employee is paying for that benefit with their labor. The Catholic Church clearly doesn't have any problem with Catholics spending their wages on contraceptives. The law, which is absolutely reasonable, sets standards within our concocted health care system which workers can count on. No religious organization which chooses to become an employer of non-religious services, more over any employer, such as Judy’s former company, should use benefits as ethical leverage to their own end, portraying themselves like a Kris Kringle who comes down the chimney to collect up last year’s presents because the children have been naughty.