The three-year agreement ends a 15-week walkout over an increase in health coverage costs.

By Jeanne Bonner | Of The Morning Call
October 2, 2007

Tama Manufacturing workers have agreed to a new three-year contract, ending a 15-week strike.

A majority of the 140 workers at the Lehigh County textile plant ratified a contract that will limit the employees' contributions to health care benefits, the workers' union, Unite Here, said Monday. The workers, who will return to work today, began the strike after the privately held company asked employees to shoulder some of the health care costs.


The Tama Manufacturing strike pitted picketing workers against others who chose to continue on the job, with often-bitter exchanges between the groups. (Emily Robson, Allentown Morning Call / June 7, 2007)


''That is a major victory,'' Gail Meyer, a Unite representative, said in an interview Monday.

In exchange for the concessions on benefits, the Hanover Township workers, who make women's clothing sold under the Alfred Dunner label, will give up a wage increase in the first year of the contract.

Tama owner Mark Fogelman did not respond to a phone message left Monday. Through a company receptionist, he has declined to comment since the strike began in June.

Meyer said Tama employees will pay about $50 a month for medical benefits, or less than a third of the amount the company had proposed when contract negotiations began in the spring.

FULL story at link.

There is one very simple solution for all workers AND employers in the entire country: single-payer, national health insurance. Everyone would be covered at a rate proporational to their income, and for employers, they wouldn't have this enormous cost on their overhead. Yes, they'd be taxed more, but companies are only taxed on profits. Isn't it better to profit and be taxed on those profits than to not profit at all because health care costs and keeping the overhead too high?