IN TRANSITION #14
One night during the summer, I had dinner with my uncle, who was in Boston for business. I brought him a copy of one of my first-person articles for City Weekly.
''You don't have health insurance?" he responded with shock after he read the piece. (He's a doctor, by the way.)
No, I told him, I didn't have health insurance.
''You've got to do something about that."
Not like I hadn't tried. After my college insurance plan expired mid-summer, I made inquiries about the price of extending it. I can't remember how much I was quoted on the phone because I was so exasperated, I threw away my notes on the subject. But it was more than the $300 a month I had (miraculously) been expecting to pay in rent -- and for catastrophic coverage only.
Besides, the deductible was so high, the insurance was unlikely to be of much use anyhow. Bottom line: There was no way I was going to make those payments on part-time wages and temping. And I was a healthy 22-year-old. No wonder 45.8 million Americans didn't have health insurance in 2004.
Getting health insurance was, I must concede, a major reason I eventually acquiesced into taking the full-time position I now call my job. Or more exactly, it was the impossible price tag of buying my own insurance, combined with talking to a friend who had recently fractured her toe, needed dental work, and broken her collarbone in a car accident -- all during a time in her young, healthy life when she wasn't insured. (Fortunately, the other guy's insurance paid for her car accident-induced injuries).
What a difference a couple of months makes. I recently found myself at a Human Resources orientation explaining the smorgasbord of benefits and choices I am now entitled to as a full-time permanent employee at Harvard, where I am a staff assistant to a professor and his research program.
Overwhelmed by new acronyms -- HMO, PPO, IRA -- and new services I had never thought twice about -- long-term disability, short-term disability, retirement planning, pensions -- I felt like a little kid playing Employee in a league of grown-up Professionals.
But the benefits, which I had once thought of as ''extras" when in fact they were essential, practically made me swoon. I talked them up to all my friends back home. ''Did you know I get a full week off for Christmas -- paid vacation -- on top of the regular time off that accrues?" I asked one gleefully.
Silence.
''Oh, and don't forget the 35-hour workweek," I preened.
My friend's reaction? Hostility.
I had known there was a difference between being a temp and being a regular employee. And certainly there was a difference between part-time and full-time work.
But I hadn't fully comprehended that being on salary also meant being included in part of the family -- that old-fashioned system where the company really did treat you as a human being and member of the community for life. (Or at least paid lip service to such things.) But the other big difference was being in a union.
The day of my union christening had finally arrived. I was giddy.
''My brother's a labor organizer," I told the union rep during a coffee break after she spoke about the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers at the orientation. ''He'll be so proud," she replied as I handed her my signed card.
Some day, my union idealism may crumble, and I'll be disillusioned along with a lot of America. After all, only 12.5 percent of wage and salary workers were union members last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But it feels pretty comforting after months of employment-seeking with no health insurance or job security.
It's a feeling I wish I could share. After all, the only difference between the work I do now and the work I did then is I've agreed to stick around for the year.
Is that what it takes to be part of the family?
Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.
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