The Daily Alaska empire., 1946-05-17
Coal Welfare Fund
Washington Post)

John L. Lewis couples his demand for creation of a health and welfare fund with proposal to finance
 it by means of royalties levied on each ton of coal mined He also proposes that the fund be administered solely by the union. Presented in this form the de- nand is utterly unreasonable enabling the operators to claim that MT. Lewis is trying to levy private excise tax coal for the benefit of the JAWS treasury. By playing the changes on this theme and sressng the undenable dangers that would arise from building up a huge insurance welfare fund to be disbursed at the discretion of union officials public prejudice is likely to be aroused against the good as well as the bad features of the plan. Yet there is very real need for some fund of the sort desired by the mine workers Money devoted to making provision for sickness and suppementing compensation payments to victims of accidents would be a solid investment yielding dividends to both the mine com panies and their employees.
 AS a matter of fact the practice of setting up programs in connection with collective bargaining agreements has gained surprising headway in recent years year ago the Department of Labor made report representative type of health benefit plans under agreements negotiated with unions. More than 900 workers covered by these agreements alone. Some of them administered solely by unions by employers and some by private insur- ance companies Over 100000 workers, for example, covered by the jointly administered health insr- ance programs negotiated by the Amalgamated Cloth ing Workers, which operative in IT States. The Amalgamateds insurance plan is financed entirely by employers who contribute per cent of their weekly payrols to the insurance fund.
 Insurance programs of this kind have much to commend them since they supplement the inadequate provision made for workers and their dependents under public social insurance programs. The latter type of insurance will at distant date We hope be expanded to sickness and permanent dis ability making private provision for such contingencies less urgent However, the scale of payments under comprehensive compulsory social insurance systems is necessarily restricted in amount; there will always be for supplementary payments by concerns able to meet part all of the cost of additional insurance for their employees. It is therefore unfortunate to put it midly-that the tactics of John L. Lewis and of that rival labor czar, James c. Petro, have created justified apprehension concerning the ulti- mate outcome of the current trend toward setting up welfare funds under union contracts.
 Payroll levies to finance compulsory social insur- ance programs will become increasingly burdensome as those programs expand The cost of additional bene fits must therefore be kept within bounds to protect employers from excessive demands that could only be met by shifting the cost of such impostons to the public by charging higher prices for their products Above all, safeguards must be set up to make that funds collected for insurance purposes under collective bargaining agreements used only for designated purposes and dsbursed at the discretion of union officials