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Machinists Union Leaders Vote to Oppose Health Benefits Tax

Mon. January 11, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, D.C., January 11, 2010 – The Executive Council of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) has voted unanimously to oppose any health care reform legislation that is funded by taxing the value of workers’ existing health care benefits.

“For decades, IAM members exchanged substantial wage increases for the best possible health insurance,” said IAM President Tom Buffenbarger. “Now, in a bizarre turn of events, their insurance premiums will be subject to a forty percent excise tax if the Senate version of health care reform becomes law. Democratic leaders have the power to stop this travesty and I urge them to do so, quickly and completely.”

“IAM members are rightfully outraged over the bait and switch tactics at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue,” said Buffenbarger. “They were promised health care reform. Now they face health care deformed by backroom deals.”

No single issue brought more union members onto last year’s campaign trail than Republican threats to tax health care benefits, and the Democrats’ pledge to protect those benefits.

“Like NAFTA, the health care excise tax is an issue with the potential to reverberate for years,” said Buffenbarger. “Machinists have long memories. And they will long remember who taxed their benefits after pledging on the campaign trail not to do so.”

The IAM is among the largest industrial trade unions in North America, representing nearly 700,000 active and retired members in dozens of industries. For more information about the IAM, visit www.goiam.org.

McCain gets it, Obama doesn’t

Maybe I got it wrong. During the presidential campaign I wrote columns blasting Sen. John McCain for siding with the big bankers on deregulation, citing his choosing ex-Sen. Phil Gramm, currently a vice chairman of the Swiss-owned banking giant UBS, as his presidential campaign chair. Barack Obama, on the other hand, repeatedly blasted Gramm and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which the Texas Republican had pushed through Congress, with President Bill Clinton’s support-legislation that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act and radically deregulated the financial industry. 

But now the roles are reversed, and it is McCain who, along with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has sponsored a bill to repeal Gramm’s legislation, while Obama seeks to preserve it. 

Go to next page for Video presentation and rest of the story…

Continue reading Financial Reform: Obama Opposes Bill to Rein in Speculators →

by Mike Hall, Jan 6, 2010

UNITEHERE! President John Wilhelm (left) and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka were among the 140 arrested at a San Francisco hotel sit-in for justice.

More than 100 union members, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and UNITEHERE! President John Wilhelm were arrested at a sit-in demanding justice and a fair contract for San Francisco hotel workers last night. The workers have been without a contract since August.

The sit-in in front of the Hilton San Francisco followed a march by nearly 1,000 members of UNITEHERE! Local 2, other union members and community and political supporters. Says Ingrid Carp, a cook for 29 years at the Hilton:

“We’re determined as ever to win a good contract. It’s wrong for corporations to position themselves to make billions with the coming economic recovery, and expect us to go backward.”

The action is part of a campaign to win fair contracts at several national hotel chains, including Hilton, Hyatt and Starwood. The profitable chains are using the recession as an excuse to demand health care benefit cuts in contract talks with more than 16,000 workers at dozens of hotels in San Francisco, Chicago and other cities.

Continue reading One for All, All for One – Fighting for a Contract in San Francisco →

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Continue reading CBS 60 Minutes: The Coming Second Wave of Mortgage Defaults →

Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare

Healthcare Is A Right — Not A Privilege

www.laborforsinglepayer.org

SENATE HEALTHCARE BILL: A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

An analysis by the Labor Campaign for Single Payer

In a last minute flurry of pork barrel deals and capitulation to powerful corporate interests, the U. S. Senate finally passed its version of healthcare reform on December 24.  The final bill was roundly condemned by nearly every labor organization in the country.

“The health care bill being considered by the U. S. Senate is inadequate and too tilted toward the insurance industry,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.  Karen Higgens, RN, Co-President of the 150,000 member National Nurses Union, concurred.  “Sadly, we have ended up with legislation that fails to meet the test of true healthcare reform…further locking into place a system that entrenches the chokehold of the profit-making insurance giants on our health.”

Continue reading The Labor Campaign for Single Payer Calls for National Conference to Plan New Healthcare Campaign →

Nation’s Largest RN Organization Blasts Bid to Tax Benefits,

Urges Other Reforms to Protect Patients, Families

In Final Talks on Healthcare Reform Legislation 

“We ask and expect members of the House of Representatives to vote no on any bill providing for an excise tax on health care benefits.”

The nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses today called on House members to hold the line in opposing a tax on workers’ healthcare benefits, and called for other changes in the final healthcare legislation to expand affordability and crack down on insurance industry abuses.

Continue reading National Nurses Union Calls for Defeat of Healthcare Bill if Workers Healthcare Benefits are Taxed →