Building Worker Power in Cities & States:
Benefits Administration

Background

By formalizing the role of unions in the administration of public benefits, cities and states can strengthen governments’ capacity to deliver public services as well as support worker power-building. In several countries, unions play a role in administering publicly-funded unemployment benefits – a model known as the Ghent system, named after the city in Belgium in which it originated. In recent years, similar policy models incorporating unions and worker organizations in the delivery of government services have been adopted in the U.S. at the state and local levels. 

Too few eligible beneficiaries successfully access social safety net benefits, but evidence suggests that unions make a crucial difference. For instance, in 2022, only about a quarter of unemployed workers in the U.S. who were potentially eligible for unemployment insurance (UI) applied for benefits; of those who did not apply, over half were unaware that they could have qualified.¹ Unemployed workers who had previously been covered by a union contract, however, were more than twice as likely to apply for UI benefits compared to their non-union counterparts.² Moreover, take-up rates as well as cost-efficiency measures of UI benefits have been found to trend higher in Ghent countries than in the U.S. and other European countries.³

Research on the impact of the Ghent system in countries where union-administered benefits programs have been implemented suggests that such policies have helped maintain high union membership rates, even in right-to-work countries such as Sweden and Finland.⁴ As such, giving unions and worker organizations a role in benefits administration may help to mitigate the “free-rider problem” American unions face as a result of right-to-work laws impacting the private sector, which has been further exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME banning union security agreements in the public sector.⁵ Under a Ghent-like system, workers who receive assistance and support from unions throughout the often-arduous process of accessing public benefits may in turn feel more inclined to join and support a union.⁶ Furthermore, unions could help workers outside their bargaining unit access benefits which can spread the understanding of the union advantage to communities who do not know about unions.

Objective of State Intervention

The obstacles to accessing public benefits are numerous – lack of information about the existence of such benefits programs, misinformation about eligibility standards, and complexity of the application process are among the most common. Unions and worker organizations are well-positioned to serve as trusted sources to provide guidance and information on how to navigate these obstacles. 

Another advantage to formalizing the role of worker organizations in administering public benefits is the opportunity provided for working people to come in direct contact with the labor movement, some for the first time. From the worker perspective – as discussed in the section on strategic enforcement – such partnerships can help to legitimize worker organizations. Given workers typically do not experience the tangible benefits of having a union until after overcoming the hurdles between the decision to organize and a first contract, Ghent-like models can give workers a sense of what unions and worker organizations can do to support and empower working people – critically, before workers are subjected to employers’ anti-union campaigns during organizing drives.

Preemption Risk

The preemption risk is similar to that discussed in the section on strategic enforcement partnerships. Policies formalizing the role of unions in benefits administration do not facilitate interaction between unions and employers in a way that resembles collective bargaining, and therefore carry a low risk of preemption.

Options for State or Local Action

I. Unemployment Insurance

Unemployment insurance (UI) provides temporary cash assistance to workers who become unemployed through no fault of their own. In most states, UI is funded through employer contributions and administered at the state level.⁷ Requirements for eligibility as well as payment amounts vary state by state.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the DOL implemented the Unemployment Insurance Navigator Grants program through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), disbursing $18 million to seven states partnering with community and worker organizations to provide training, education, and general assistance to workers applying for UI benefits.⁸ The program’s goals focus on improving timely benefits delivery and addressing barriers to equitable access for underserved and historically marginalized communities.  

Across the selected seven state agencies, UI Navigator grants fund activities supporting UI benefits access at the individual, community, and systems levels, including: conducting digital and in-person outreach, providing one-on-one assistance to claimants, training staff, increasing language access/translation support, and strengthening feedback loops with state agencies.⁹ While the unions and worker organizations involved in the UI navigator programs do not directly engage in recruiting new members or organizing campaigns as part of the process, the navigator program nonetheless provides an opportunity for workers to have a positive interaction with the labor movement.

Spotlight: Maine Peer Workforce Navigators Program

Maine was one of the seven recipients of the ARPA UI Navigator Grants. In 2022, the state launched the Maine Peer Workforce Navigator (PWN) program, a partnership between the Maine Department of Labor and a coalition of unions and community organizations to provide assistance in navigating the UI system as well as other public benefits programs to any and all eligible workers.¹⁰ 

The project assisted thousands of people apply for unemployment as well as access critical wraparound supports such as reemployment, housing, and nutrition assistance. In alignment with the goals of the UI Navigator program, the PWN program leveraged the capacity of its coalition – which includes 160 unions affiliated with the Maine AFL-CIO across the state – to reach workers in rural, immigrant, low-income, and communities of color.

Read More

II. Healthcare Benefits

In 2013, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – which sought to expand access to affordable health insurance and reduce healthcare costs through measures such as Medicaid expansion, health insurance marketplaces, and consumer tax subsidies – established a healthcare Navigator program funding trained individuals or organizations, including unions, to help consumers understand and enroll in marketplace coverage. In June 2024, the Biden administration announced an additional $500 million in funding for the Navigators program, which helped enroll over 20 million people through the 2024 enrollment period.¹¹

Unions and worker organizations have served as ACA navigators to assist thousands of workers access health insurance through ACA marketplaces. For example, SEIU-UHW sponsored and helped enroll over 10,000 Californians at community-wide enrollment events.¹² This model provides an opportunity for worker organizations to support worker power-building in several ways, including through creating more worker-oriented transparency in the system and building stronger relationships with those workers by providing for their needs outside the workplace. Another way unions have played a role in supporting healthcare benefits delivery is through public sector training partnerships with state agencies – for instance, through the RISE Partnership, the Oregon Department of Administrative Services partnered with local unions (including SEIU 503 and AFSCME Council 75) to provide training and education to public sector employees on navigating public benefits administration.¹³

1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Characteristics of Unemployment Insurance Applicants and Benefit Recipients Summary, Economic News Release (March 29, 2023), https://www.bls.gov/news.release/uisup.nr0.htm. ↩︎
2.  BLS, supra note 104. ↩︎
3. Jochen Clasen & Elke Viebrock, Voluntary Unemployment Insurance and Trade Union Membership:
   Investigating the Connections in Denmark and Sweden, 37 J. Soc. Pol’y 433, 437. ↩︎
4. David Madland & Malkie Wall, American Ghent, Center for American Progress (September 18, 2019), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/american-ghent/. ↩︎
5. Matthew Dimick, Union Membership and the Ghent System, in The Cambridge Handbook of U.S. Labor Law for the Twenty-First Century (Richard Bales and Charlotte Garden eds., 2019). ↩︎
6. Dimick, supra note 105. ↩︎
7. Employees contribute to UI in three states: Alaska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. ↩︎
8. US Department of Labor Awards More than $18M in Grants to Address Disparities in Delivery of Unemployment Benefits, Services in 7 States, U.S. Department of Labor (June 10, 2022), https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20220610-0. ↩︎
9. Karen Needels, Briana Starks, Marina Gorzig, Kristen Joyce & Jillian Berk, Unemployment Insurance Navigators Implementation Study: Design Report, Mathematica (August 18, 2023), https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OASP/evaluation/pdf/UI-Navigators-External-Report.pdf. ↩︎
10. 26 MRSA §1046 as amended by S.P. 507 (2021), https://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/getPDF.asp?paper=SP0507&item=1&snum=130. ↩︎
11. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Biden-Harris Administration Releases Data Showing Historic Gains in Health Care Coverage in Minority Communities (June 7, 2024), https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/06/07/biden-harris-administration-releases-data-showing-historic-gains-health-care-coverage-minority-communities.html. ↩︎
12. SEIU-UHW, SEIU-UHW enrolls 11,000 Californians in health coverage (April 2, 2014), https://web.archive.org/web/20190224205210/http:/www.seiu-uhw.org/archives/18262. ↩︎
13. RISE Partnership, https://www.risepartnership.com/introducing-uplift-oregon/. ↩︎