The Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare

If Congress approves President Obama’s budget proposal, it will mark the beginning of the end for the social insurance model that the labor movement and its allies have spent generations establishing and defending. This is the first time that a sitting Democratic President has proposed cuts in Social Security and Medicare. But it won’t be the last. As every shop steward knows, once you agree to put a cherished provision on the table, you open it up to an endless series of cuts and concessions.

For working people, these cuts couldn’t come at a worse time. Many have had their life savings decimated by the Great Recession and the collapse of the housing bubble. Social Security provides two-thirds of the income for a typical retiree. And it will get even worse for the next generation that the politicians always claim they are so concerned about. 51% of current workers are not covered by any employer pension or 401 (k) program and 34% have absolutely no retirement savings. The budget also would cut veteran’s benefits and federal employee pensions and other benefits.

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There is a tough contract fight underway in Massachusetts that may portend the future of healthcare bargaining. The Old Rochester School Committee is demanding that new hires pay 50% of all healthcare premiums. The UE represents non-teaching employees of the school system. Cooks start at $13,300 per year. Family coverage would cost 80% of their income, leaving them earning $2 an hour after deductions for health insurance!

It gets worse. Most of these workers would be better off if they bought subsidized coverage on their own through the state’s “Healthcare Connector” healthcare exchange. But, under Massachusetts’s healthcare rules, these UE members would not be eligible because that plan is only available to workers whose employers offer no coverage. To add insult to injury, many of these low wage workers would be subject to a fine of $1,000 or more per year under the state’s individual mandate rules if they chose to remain uninsured rather than bankrupt their family by participating in the employer’s plan. You can show your solidarity with these workers by signing their change.org petition.

These Massachusetts school workers know the score. Their union–the UE–has been a charter member of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. “Healthcare should be a right for everyone”, their letter states. “Every other country in the industrialized world protects this right at half the cost through a Medicare-for-all, or ‘single payer’ type healthcare system. Until we win that, please support the families of workers at ORR by asking the School Committee to provide affordable health insurance and care for all school district employees.”

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is modeled on the Massachusetts plan. Over the next year, as the individual mandate and state exchanges are implemented nationally, workers everywhere will be confronted with dilemmas very similar to that faced by the school workers in Massachusetts. A new, complex bargaining landscape will emerge.

Employers will seek to use the ACA provisions to transfer more costs onto the backs of workers. Union supported multi-employer plans–which provide the gold standard of healthcare for working Americans–will be subjected to new stresses. The imposition of the Cadillac tax in 2018 will penalize many union workers who have sacrificed years of wage increases to maintain decent benefits. Low-wage and part time workers workers may be particularly vulnerable to these attacks.

At our January National Strategy Conference, the Labor Campaign for Single Payer resolved to stand in solidarity with workers fighting to maintain their negotiated benefits while continuing to fight on for healthcare for all. The Massachusetts school workers are doing exactly that. Please show your support by adding your name to their petition and forwarding this email widely.

More than two hundred union leaders and activists gathered in Chicago for the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare’s fourth national conference to strategize about next steps for labor in the movement to win universal health care. With government officials from both major parties contemplating cuts in Medicare as part of a “grand bargain,” delegates resolved to stand up to any cuts in this cornerstone social insurance program.

Keynote address by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis

More videos from the conference.

Conferees were welcomed and inspired by Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, who shared lessons of her union’s recent successful strike. Lewis drew important parallels between the struggles for quality public education and quality universal health care.

A second inspiring keynote came from Nicole Bernard representing the French CGT Federation of Social Security and Health Care Workers who described the struggle by French workers to defend their national health care plan and pledged strong support for American efforts to win single payer.

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) brought delegates to their feet as he described his plan to resubmit legislation and hold hearings on Improved and Expanded Medicare for All, House Bill 676. “Health care is a right, not a privilege,” said Conyers.

Workshops were held on the anticipated impact of the Affordable Care Act on joint labor-management health and welfare funds and on already contentious collective bargaining on health care benefits with employers.

Delegates offered strategies and committed to action items to prepare union leaders in their communities for the ACA and build the reform movement. Emphasis was placed on the importance of building coalitions with medical providers, community groups and the disabled.

“There was a strong consensus that the Affordable Care Act will not solve the health care crisis,” said Martha Kuhl, a RN from Oakland, CA and Secretary-Treasurer of National Nurses United. “The broad support from so many labor leaders and union activists reaffirmed labor’s unique position as a strategic force to win real solutions that will provide quality care for all working people.”

“We don’t have a budget crisis; we have a jobs and inequality crisis,” said Jeff Johnson, President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO. “We could solve our fiscal problems if we cut out private insurance and paid far less for health care like any other industrial country.”

The conference had an unexpectedly large turnout that included representatives from ten state and local labor councils, more than 50 different unions and especially strong representation from five state nurses associations. Delegates were joined by many supporters from national and local health care reform organizations.

Photos from the labor strategy conference may be seen here.

Videos

Defending public healthcare in France: CGT Representative Nicole Bernard

Report by LCSP Coordinator Mark Dudzic