The head of the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department, who generally speaks on behalf of all the group’s affiliated unions, last month urged Congress to blend universal health care coverage in the U.S. with existing Taft-Hartley rules plans that currently cover all building trades union workers.

Building Trades Department President Mark Ayers called it “one of the most important challenges confronting our nation: the need for a national health care system that provides universal access to affordable, quality health care, that responsibly controls costs, and that distributes costs fairly, without unnecessarily disrupting established employment-based health plans that are meeting their participants’ needs.  National, systemic reform has long been an aspiration.  Hopefully it will soon become reality beginning with enactment of comprehensive legislation this year.”

That’s how Ayers opened his May 22 letter to Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. As the debate continues over instituting a national health care plan, the building trades and the rest of organized labor have been busy outlining their positions on the subject.

Ayers insisted in his letter that “great care must be taken in crafting legislation to avoid harming Taft-Hartley, multi-employer health and welfare funds which are an essential part of the employment-based system that the Committee is trying to preserve.  As you know, even the best intended legislation can have destructive unintended consequences.”

The letter by Ayers essentially provides a blueprint for how the building trades intend to proceed, on behalf of the union members they represent, in the discussion on what a new health care system should look like. The building trades are essentially saying, if the nation is going to keep employer-based health care as a major component of the system– and that’s the direction President Obama seems to be headed – then construction unions are strongly in favor of keeping multi-employer plans.

Discussion in Congress has talked about blending employer plans with some kind of other universal coverage, but any solutions are a long way off.

“We again applaud you for taking on this important task of crafting national, systemic health care reform legislation,” Ayers wrote. “We ask that you take care first to do no harm to the Taft-Hartley, multi-employer health and welfare fund community, but also to foster the continued growth and soundness of the funds for the benefit of the many millions of workers and families who depend on them.”