Springfield, Missouri.  

The Greater Springfield Area Central Labor Council has endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation
introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

The Springfield Council is the 120th central labor council to endorse HR 676.

The Council’s resolution stated, “Administrative waste stemming from our reliance on private insurers consumes one-third of health spending,” and Bradley Stokes, Council President, added, “We recognize everyone in
America deserves access to affordable quality health care and strongly feel HR 676 can provide this.”

The Greater Springfield Area Council represents 10,000 working men and women in Southwest Missouri.  Stokes is the Business Manager/Financial Secretary of IBEW Local 753.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 485 union organizations in 49 states including 120 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI, MT, NE, NY, NV & MA).

For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org

Lexington, Kentucky.  At its February meeting the Executive Board of the
Bluegrass Central Labor Council voted to endorse HR 676, single payer
health care legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

Council President Barbara Pierce said:  “The Board of the CLC endorsed HR
676, single payer universal health care, because we firmly believe that
it’s the best plan for working families.”

The Bluegrass CLC, which represents workers in nine counties in Central
Kentucky, is the 119th CLC to endorse HR 676.   Six out of eight central
labor councils in Kentucky, in addition to the state AFL-CIO, have
endorsed HR 676.

President Pierce said that the council will send the resolution to
Representative Ben Chandler, who represents the region in the US Congress.

from New York Times

by Andrew Coates MD

COBRA is a law that allows you to keep your employer-sponsored health
insurance for 18 months if you lose or change jobs. To do so, you have to
pay 102% of the cost (the full premium plus a 2% surcharge).

The stimulus package just passed provides for laid off workers, who had
health insurance on the job, to receive a subsidy of 65% of the health
insurance premium for up to nine months.

Continue reading Subsidizing COBRA Is Not Enough–We Need HR 676: National Health Care →

A Lesson from France
“The French government said it would give 6.5 billion euros ($8.4 billion) in low interest loans to Renault SA and PSA Peugeot-Citroen in exchange for pledges that the car makers won’t close any factories or lay off any workers in France for the duration of the funding.” Wall Street Journal 2-10-09

Quel surpris! The French government bailout of France’s auto industry requires the auto companies to continue the employment of the company’s workers! In the US, on the other hand, the government urges the auto industry to “restructure” before receiving bailout funds, principally by laying off workers.

Are US auto workers any less deserving of this pledge? Does government owe them any less, in a time of global economic crisis?

But then nobody asked…

In the US, representatives of the auto workers join the CEO’s in begging for corporate bailout money while conceding that everyone must make sacrifices. It is a foregone conclusion that tens of thousands of workers will lose their jobs for the sake of “restructuring”.

France’s commitment to its auto workers certainly does not spring from any compassion on the part of its government. French President Sarkozy has dedicated his term to breaking the back of France’s unions. He is widely viewed as a French George Bush, seeking to wipeout the social gains of years of struggle in the interest of a harsh competitive regimen.

But the French working class has pushed back with militant, united street actions and strikes. They have joined students, immigrants, retirees, and professionals in resisting. Long derided by arrogant tourists for its labor militancy, France has – ironically – faired better economically than its European counterparts in the face of the world crisis.

The above commentary is from zz’s blog. Note that unemployed French auto workers also enjoy continued access to full health care benefits under France’s national single payer helathcare system.

by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich

Once they were as gods, but the deities of the American banking system are now in ruins, plunged from their pedestals into the maw of taxpayer largesse. Congress voted to give the banks $700 billion, lifting them temporarily out of their sepulcher of debt, while revealing a deep truth about the condition of America’s financial powers:

They never had the money they said they had as they constructed their debt-based monetary system which now lies in ruins. Their decisions on behalf of depositors, shareholders and investors were lacking in basic integrity and common sense. Green gods bailing out with their golden parachutes. 

There was a time when their power was real. Come with me to Cleveland 30 years ago today.

Dec. 15, 1978, Cleveland, Ohio

I awoke to find a curt payment demand that was dropped on my front step by a grandfatherly man who supplemented his Social Security delivering the morning newspaper. The headline plastered across the front page:

Cleveland Trust: Pay Up. Bank would relent if Muny Light were sold, Forbes believes.

One of America’s largest banks, Cleveland Trust, led local banks in demanding immediate payment from the city by midnight, Dec. 15, of $14.5 million in short-term loans.

I regarded the headline skeptically. Having lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including a couple of cars, I had come to an encyclopedic knowledge of dun letters, sent to my parents by battalions of bill collectors seeking immediate payment for televisions, cars and a variety of household appliances that never seemed to work. I first came to regard these credit alarms with trepidation, later with impassiveness, with the expectation that as our family grew to two adults and seven children it would soon be on the move again, incurring new delinquencies with each new address. Lack of access to money, housing and credit seemed to be a permanent condition.

Now, having fought through a thicket of consequence to become America’s youngest mayor, elected on a promise to stop the privatization of the city’s electric system, I was faced with paying off loans taken out by the previous mayor, for the financing of municipal projects of dubious value.

The banks refused to extend terms of payment and connived with City Council members to block alternative payment plans, such as the sale of city land or tax revenues. The banks knew the city couldn’t otherwise pay. They demanded instead the sale of the city’s electric system, Muny Light, to an investor-owned electric company, the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. (CEI).  The president of the Cleveland Council, George Forbes, had met with the head of Cleveland Trust bank, who insisted on the sale of Muny Light as a precondition for extending the city credit. This was a case of the bank blackmailing the city, pure and simple.

Continue reading Cleveland, OH Congressman Dennis Kucinich on His Battle With the Banks →

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08349/935101-176.stm for complete story

(snip)

Locally, Randy Shannon, who heads a chapter of Progressive Democrats for America in New Brighton, Butler County, hosted a breakfast yesterday for about 40 people, including Obama volunteers who support single-payer health care.

“It’s a whole new ballgame now,” said Mr. Shannon, whose group has its own Web site, Beavercountyblue.org, and has been working with the AFL-CIO on single-payer health care during the past few elections.

This time, “we wanted to bring in Obama volunteers to see if we could work together” — even, as he acknowledged, it’s not clear if the Obama administration will support a single-payer approach.

The New York Times Dec. 12, 2008

CHICAGO — The word came just after lunch on Dec. 2 in the cafeteria of Republic Windows and Doors. A company official told assembled workers that their plant on this city’s North Side, which had operated for more than four decades, would be closed in just three days.

There was a murmur of shock, then anger, in the drab room lined with snack machines. Some women cried. But a few of the factory’s union leaders had been anticipating this moment. Several weeks before, they had noticed that equipment had disappeared from the plant, and they began tracing it to a nearby rail yard.

And so, in secret, they had been discussing a bold but potentially dangerous plan: occupying the factory if it closed.

By the time their six-day sit-in ended on Wednesday night, the 240 laid-off workers at this previously anonymous 125,000-square-foot plant had become national symbols of worker discontent amid the layoffs sweeping the country. Civil rights workers compared them to Rosa Parks. But all the workers wanted, they said, was what they deserved under the law: 60 days of severance pay and earned vacation time.

Continue reading Workers Victory in Chicago Sit-In →

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