Winter's home stretch brings reminders of a cold reality for U.S. businesses: The cost of providing employees health care benefits is spiraling. Annual premiums rose in 2003 to an average of $3,383 and $9,068 for single and family coverage, respectively, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research & Educational Trust in California.

Employers inside and outside the concrete industry saw the issue amplified last month. On February 26, an agreement was ratified to end one of largest and most protracted strikes in recent years. United Food and Commercial Workers Union members employed by southern California grocers Albertsons, Kroger and Safeway approved terms of a new contract with limited changes in health care benefits. Ending a work stoppage that began in October, the agreement covers upwards of 70,000 workers. Prior to the settlement, UFCW reports, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry noted at a gathering of striking workers, “I honor these hard working men and women for taking a stand on behalf of workers everywhere in the fight for national health care reform. No worker should have to stand on a picket line in order to provide their family quality health care.”

Three thousand miles west of California, much lower profile work stoppages involving health care coverage and employee copayment disputes continued unfolding on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Negotiations between Teamsters Local 996 officials and Hawaiian Cement representatives took place toward the end of the month as parties sought to resolve a concrete workers' strike that began Feb. 7. Talks between the union and the island's other major operator, Ameron Hawaii Concrete and Construction — whose concrete and aggregate workers called a strike Feb. 6 under similar circumstances — were to resume early this month.

Enlisting about 70 Hawaiian Cement and 140 Ameron workers, the strikes affected the bulk of concrete and aggregate production and delivery on Oahu, where residential and military work has boosted construction to its healthiest levels in more than 10 years. Ameron workers sought improved copayment terms in their health care benefit packages, while Hawaiian Cement workers were demanding copayment provisions comparable to the levels in the existing Ameron contract. Back in California, Ameron was also contending with strikes over health-care and pension-benefit disputes that Boilermakers and Laborers union members effected on two concrete pressure pipe plants.

The California and Hawaii strikes show how disputes involving health care benefits and concrete employers are reaching farther and wider, engulfing subsidiaries of New York Stock Exchange companies (Ameron Intl. and MDU Resources) and family-run businesses. Last summer, health care coverage disputes dogged two of the best operators in the Midwest: Iowa's Flynn Group and Minnesota's Cemstone Products Co. Both settled brief strikes on worker-friendly terms; all parties acknowledged the challenges of runaway health insurance costs.

Concerns over rising premiums are not confined to producers. Slipform equipment manufacturer Power Curbers Inc. was front and center in “Health Care Heights” — the lead report in a Feb. 24 Small Business section of The New York Times. Power Curbers President Dwight Messinger told reporter Edmund Andrews that health insurance premiums for his Salisbury, N.C., company had jumped 25 percent in 2003 (to $634/month) and were rising another 19 percent this year (to $749/month). “We will be heading to socialized medicine, and pretty quick, if we don't do something about this,” noted Messinger, a self-described conservative with political views presumably different than those of Sen. John Kerry.

In an ideal world, market forces would shield employers and employees from the financial ruin wrought by health care interests. A small snapshot of events from the past month, however, suggests that instead of the word “market,” we will see “government” more often in the same sentence as doctors, hospitals and prescription drugs. Not a good time to pass on the apples or Wheaties.

e-mail: dmarsh@primediabusiness.com