This year -- just like every year for the past four years -- I had to choose between taking a significant pay cut or losing my family's health insurance. It's an impossible choice. How do you choose between putting food on the family table and having the peace of mind that you won't go bankrupt if your child breaks a leg?
Thankfully, this week the California State Assembly approved the first phase of a state health care package that will help millions of people like me avoid that awful choice. The California health care solution will provide public assistance and tax breaks to those of us who work hard but still can't cover today's astronomical health insurance rates.
More than 30 million Californians will be covered under the agreement, including my family
I am a doorman at Russian Hill, a luxury apartment building that sits high on a hill in San Francisco. I love my job. I have a healthy, happy family. I own my own home. My oldest son is just entering college.
I make a good living at $17.48/ hour, one of the highest rates of our local doorman union, but I don't have to do the math to convince you that there simply isn't much money left over to cover costly co-pays and high deductions. And that's exactly what 2,000 of my colleagues and I have been forced to do every time our contract expires. Our Kaiser health insurance co-pays rose 25 percent last year, but our employers wouldn't cover the costs. This year I took a pay cut of $0.40/hour to maintain my family's benefits. That's almost a thousand dollars a year -- money that could have gone into our children's college funds or paid the mortgage.
My parents back in Pakistan sacrificed everything to put me on a plane to the United States so that I could leave a life fixed by chance and began a new one determined by choice. In America, chance may determine where you begin, but you get to choose where you work, the God you pray to, the community you join, and the people you share your life with.
In America, one should not have to choose between health care and basic necessities.
For me, California's new health care plan will restore the blessing of having good choices. My union president said the other day, "The longer we wait, the worse it gets." I could not agree more. The State Senate needs to pass this health care plan to help families like mine hold on to our American Dream.
Eric Emmanuel is a doorman in San Francisco and an elected leader of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877. Since immigrating to the U.S. from Pakistan as a young boy, Emmanuel has been able to fulfill most all of his dreams and is very proud to be an American citizen. In the coming years, he looks forward to working with his union and state representatives to help pass California's landmark universal healthcare bill, ABX-1.
Just Work is a series presented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to give a voice to working people to discuss their daily struggles to balance work, afford life and participate in a more just society. SEIU welcomes submissions to Just Work! Please send your story (800 words or less) to ali.jost@seiu.org.
About SEIU
The 1.9 million-member SEIU is the fastest-growing union in North America. SEIU members are winning better wages, health care, and more secure jobs for our communities, while uniting their strength with their counterparts around the world to help ensure that workers, not just corporations and CEOs, benefit from today's global economy.