Labor Union Blog

Members of dozens of unions rallied in Washington, D.C., today in a show of support for President Obama as he held a health care forum.

With nearly 700 Alliance for Retired Americans members filling the Civic Center in Delray Beach, Fla., and another 700 Alliance and union members outside—far outnumbering protesters—health care reform backers sent “a powerful signal” this afternoon, said Alliance President Barbara Easterling.

“We will not be stopped in our fight to reform health care.”

Meanwhile, this afternoon in Washington, D.C., about 1,000 people, including members of more than a dozen unions, lined streets near Capitol Hill to show support for health care reform legislation. They answered a call sent yesterday to counter what had been expected to be a large turnout of reform opponents who were going to protest during President Obama’s health care reform teleconference and webcast. Only a handful of reform opponents showed up.

In Florida, U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings and Robert Wexler joined Easterling at one of the biggest health care town hall meetings this congressional recess. Easterling urged the crowd to “make it your mission to help separate fact from fiction in the health care debate.” She told them:

Stay together in the face of the big insurance companies trying to scare seniors, misleading them with lies and predictions of doom. These scare tactics are false, but not enough people know this.

Lobbyists and places like Fox News are spending millions of dollars—and spreading millions of lies—to preserve the status quo. Why? Because they are the winners in our current system, a broken system that puts profits ahead of people, the special interests ahead of the public interest.

Health care reform legislation will make it easier for seniors to see a doctor, get a prescription filled, close the Medicare prescription drug “donut” hole and afford long-term care, she told the crowd.

Easterling also said a public health insurance plan option is a crucial element to reform because it

would hold insurance companies accountable and keep their premiums and business practices in check.

Louisa McQueeney, general manager of a small citrus shop, was outside the civic center and told the Palm Beach Post her 10-person fruit business pays about $1,200 every month per employee for health care coverage, in addition to the $3,000 that’s siphoned from their paychecks into health savings accounts.

The current health care system is killing our business. The cost is prohibitive. We can’t do it anymore. What we need is a public option to get the insurance companies to start paying attention. The price goes up, up, up, up.

Hastings said that for the 17 years he has served in Congress, health care reform has generated a lot of talk but no action.

Enough already. It’s time for action. I find it unconscionable that people in this country go bankrupt from the cost of health care.

Sylvia Gruber, 83, a retired public school teacher from Long Island, was among those inside the packed Civic Center and told the Orlando Sun Sentinel:

I think this country is big enough and wealthy enough to provide health care for everyone—and I hope righteous enough.

Wrapping up her remarks to the overflow crowd, Easterling said:

Think about your children and grandchildren and your nieces and nephews. How are they doing in these difficult times? What would happen if they lost their job? At a time of sky-high premiums and unfair rules against pre-existing conditions, would they be able to get health insurance? Would they be able to pay their doctor’s bill or get a prescription filled?

Retirees have a lot to gain from health care reform. We will give future generations a retirement that they can count on. This can be our lasting legacy.

Workers at the only Beetle producing Volkswagen plant in the world went on strike Tuesday. The workers at the Mexican plant rejected a proposed $425 bonus and 1 percent wage. The workers are seeking a wage increase of 8.25 percent.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was in Los Angeles on Wednesday to show solidarity with car wash workers who are trying to join the United Steelworkers. Car wash workers in the city have formed a subsidiary of the Steelworkers union called the Carwash Workers Organizing Committee. During he rally Sweeney called Vermont Hand Wash one of “dirtiest car washes” in Los Angeles.

[Sweeney]: These workers have gone through hell trying to form a union to win just living standards.

Workers have made multiple allegations of unfair labor practices, wage violations, and threats of retaliation for trying to organize.

The demand created by the “Cash for Clunkers” program has General Motors rolling out a new plan that calls for the recalling some laid off workers. The company will add 60,000 vehicles to its end of year production schedule and that means nearly 1,350 laid-off workers could soon be back on the job. If the numbers are reached GM will see a 35 percent increase in production in the third quarter of the year over the second quarter. Ford, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, and Chrysler have all suggested they will need to amp up production due to the increase in demand.

U.S. House and Senate health care reform bills that have won committee approval contain a public health insurance option as a vital component and that, says a new report released this morning, “is considerable cause for celebration.”

The report’s author, Yale University professor Jacob S. Hacker, also warns that efforts to push health care cooperatives, which recently have been floated as an alternative to a public option, are meant

“to kill the public plan and, with it, the prospect of an effective competitor to consolidated insurance companies that have too often failed to provide affordable health security.”

The report, commissioned by the Institute for America’s Future, details how a strong public health insurance plan is critical to successfully achieving the goals of health reform—lower costs, higher quality and guaranteed health security for all Americans.

A public health insurance plan option would allow working families to keep their current employer-provided coverage or, if they have no insurance, choose between a private plan and a public plan that offers quality care. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

A quality public health insurance option is a crucial part of health care reform to keep private insurance companies honest, hold down costs and ensure that everybody has a health care choice available.

The House bill (H.R. 3200), approved by three committees, and the Senate version (The Affordable Health Choices Act, no bill number yet) passed by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, both call for a public plan option, but contain some differences in the way such a plan would operate.

However, leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, which has yet to produce a bill, have dropped support for a public plan option and endorsed health care co-ops-yet provided few details of how the co-ops would operate.

Hacker, who calls the co-ops cop-outs, says:

There is absolutely no reason to think that cooperatives of any sort could achieve the three crucial goal that a competing public plan must accomplish—provide a backup option offering health and financial security to individuals without employer coverage, a cost and quality benchmark, and a cost-control backstop that drives payment and delivery system reform.

The report, Public Plan Choice in Congressional Health Plans, examines the differences in the legislation and finds there are three “crucial provision” that would ensure a public options can compete on level playing field with the private insurance industry, produce cost savings and provide broad coverage.

• Medicare “tie-in” that allows the public plan to develop a broad national provider network with competitive payment rates quickly;
• Creation of a competitive exchange that can give a range of business, as well as uninsured Americans, access to the public plan and regulated private insurance options; and
• Providing the public plan with enough authority to reduce medical inflation through drug-price bargaining and innovations in the financing and delivery of care.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—most of whose members have said they will not support a health care reform without a public option—puts it this way:

The public option is central to healthcare reform. Real reform, which lowers costs and ensures all Americans get the quality, affordable healthcare that they deserve, cannot be accomplished without a robust public option.

Click here to read the full report.

We at the AFL-CIO have come out strongly for a public health care option. Sweeney said this week that a public option is

the only way to force real competition on the insurance companies is a strong public plan option.

Appearing on the Rachel Maddow show, the Ed Schultz radio show and CNBC this week, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka warned members of Congress that if they want workers’ votes, they need to support a public option.

Click here to see his full CNBC interview where he also discusses the  campaign to win health care reform, the “Big Lie” campaign by opponents of reform and how lawmakers who vote against a pubic option could lose support of union voters.

A new study shows that the majority sign-up process is not susceptible to intimidation and that such claims just don’t hold water. Like so many corporate attacks against the Employee Free Choice Act, this myth doesn’t stand up to reality. 

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report is based on a study of four states by Robert Bruno of the University of Illinois, who noted that across more than 1,000 campaigns that involved some 34,000 workers, there was not one finding of union intimidation or coercion. A total of five complaints were filed, of which zero were found to have merit. 

Meanwhile, management intimidation of employees who want to form a union is all too common. In 2007 alone, more than 29,000 workers were found to have been the victims of corporate abuses during the attempt to form a union. 

The majority sign-up process works, and it allows workers who want to form unions to do so without fear of their bosses. A freer, fairer process for forming unions is critical to building a stronger economy, and that’s why we need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka appeared on CNBC this morning for a frank talk about health care, politics and the future of the country.

As described this week in Huffington Post, Trumka is laying out a fundamental proposition: When it comes time for millions of union members to mobilize, educate other union members and get out the vote, they’ll work on behalf of candidates who support real health care reform that provides quality, affordable health care to all and gives people the opportunity to choose a public health insurance plan alongside private options:

We finally said, look, this is the minimum. If you’re going to do something, do something that works. If you’re going to have health insurance reform, you must have a public option in it. if you don’t, don’t expect us to support you.

Trumka said that the union movement is going to put its time, resources and votes behind candidates who support the needs and priorities of working families. Union members have no obligation to support politicians who listen to insurance companies instead of the millions of families who need real health care reform.

Here’s what Trumka had to say:

What we said was, there had to be three or four elements in that plan in order for us to support them. If they didn’t support the plan with a public option in it, with an employer mandate and no taxation of benefits, that we would tell our members and let our members decide….The American people are demanding that you do something.

We’ll look at your entire voting record, of course, like we always do. We’ll put the facts out to our members. I think it will be hard for them to get support if they don’t support that.

Trumka says union members will step up and put their energy and votes behind candidates who want to fix what’s wrong with our system, not maintain a broken status quo:

Every 30 seconds an American declares bankruptcy because of medical bills. Millions of people don’t have health care. You have millions of small businesses and large businesses that are struggling because health care costs are out of sight. Insurance companies have a stranglehold on us. The only way to break that stranglehold on the health care industry is to have a public option.

The fight to reform the health care system and provide quality, affordable health care for everyone is at a critical point. Now is the time to make it clear: America’s workers are looking to elected officials for leadership and support, and how members of Congress vote on health care will be at the forefront when they go to the polls to vote.