Former NBA star and coaching legend Lenny Wilkens has, like many former athletes, turned some attention to philanthropy. His Lenny Wilkens Foundation is chaired by government and corporate heads from former Mayor Norm Rice to WaMu exec Bob Flowers. Among the foundation’s interests is ensuring health care for all children. More than 100 restaurant workers at a Seattle-area restaurant chain share this concern.
The difference? They work at 13 Coins, the dining establishment in which Wilkens is an investor. And since 2006, when the restaurant changed hands, they’ve been working without a union contract, and paying outsized premiums for health insurance for themselves and their families.
On Jan. 23 workers, in cooperation with the UNITE HERE Local 8 union, are going to the offices of Wilkens’ Bellevue-based foundation to ask him: How about affordable health care for us?
Restaurant server David Johnson, a diabetic who’s worked at the 13 Coins for 29 years, says he pays $200 a month to insure himself. His son gets coverage through the publicly subsidized Basic Health Plan.
“This is one of the things we’re seeing all over,” says UNITE HERE organizer Jessica Lawson. As costs rise, “employers are shifting health coverage to the state.”
Lawson, who’s planning the event, says mediation talks with 13 Coins’ management broke up last month over health care and disciplinary policies. Workers’ representatives asked for a union-backed plan that asks for $50 premiums in return for full family coverage; management wouldn’t bite. “If they’re not going to agree to that, it’s not worth it to have a contract,” she says. “So we’re starting to reach out to the public and reach out to the other investors who might be allies.”
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