Sunday, October 13, 2019
Saturday, October 12, 2019
MASSACHUSETTS UNIONS VOTE TO VET PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ON MEDICARE FOR ALL, BREAKING WITH LABOR’S TOP BRASS
October 9 2019, 7:00 a.m.
MEMBERS OF THE Massachusetts
AFL-CIO recently passed a unanimous resolution to endorse a presidential
candidate only if that candidate supports Medicare for All, marking a
break from the labor federation’s national leadership, which has equivocated on
the question of whether to support universal health care.
The resolution, which was
passed at a late September convention in Massachusetts attended by delegates
from AFL-CIO constituent unions across the country, comes after months of
comments from labor leaders criticizing Medicare for All, despite support for
the measure among their members. In August and September, Richard Trumka, the
president of the AFL-CIO, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American
Federation of Teachers (an AFL-CIO member union), said publicly that they
do not currently support a single-payer plan would ban private insurance,
despite assurances from Sen. Bernie Sanders, who authored the Medicare for All
plan, that a single-payer option would not sacrifice hard-won benefits for
union members.
“The Massachusetts AFL-CIO
urges the national AFL-CIO to endorse a presidential candidate with a
demonstrated commitment to the pro-worker agenda that this body has previously
endorsed, including but not limited to a $15-dollar federal minimum wage,
ending Right to Work nationwide, and a Medicare for All system that recognizes
health care as a human right,” reads the resolution, which was
put forward by Beth Kontos, the president of the American Federation
of Teachers in Massachusetts.
Kontos told The Intercept that
members of AFT Massachusetts reached out to her about putting forward a
resolution. “This came from our rank and file,” she said, “who all have health
care but wanted to make sure there was health care for everyone.”
“It’s gotten to the point
where we have this tiered system with people with nothing,” Kontos said. “We
need to look at a way to take the profit out of it.”
The Massachusetts AFL-CIO has
not received a response to their resolution from the national AFL-CIO. “I
haven’t heard anything negative, nothing one way or another,” Kontos said.
If adopted by the national
organization, the resolution would effectively sideline former Vice President
Joe Biden, who supports preserving a version of the Affordable Care Act, from
being considered for endorsement by the largest federation of labor unions in
the U.S. — and instead focus labor support on Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, who has adopted Sanders’s plan in her platform. During the last
presidential election cycle, there was significant
support for Sanders within the labor federation, but the AFL-CIO
ultimately endorsed Hillary Clinton.
The national AFL-CIO office
did not return a request for comment.
EVEN AS MEMBERS of the
AFL-CIO and American Federation of Teachers have endorsed Medicare for All in
recent years, their leaders have consistently hedged on the issue. In 2017, the
AFL-CIO passed
a resolution at its national convention that was generally supportive
of Medicare for All in the long run, but with a caveat: “Our longstanding goal
for achieving this is to move expeditiously toward a single-payer system, like
Medicare for All, that provides universal coverage using a social insurance
model, while retaining a role for workers’ health plans.”
Sanders has responded to labor
concerns about the details of Medicare for All. In August, he altered
his labor plan to stipulate that companies would have to pay out the
money they would have spent in health care in other benefits for their
employees.
That was apparently not enough
for Trumka, the AFL-CIO head. He told
Chris Wallace on Fox News over Labor Day weekend that he would “have a
tough time” supporting Medicare for All, echoing statements he made to
reporters at an event
hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “We think ultimately you’re going
to have to get to a single-payer plan,” Trumka told Wallace, ‘“but there has to
be a role for the hard fought high-quality plans that we’ve negotiated. Look,
it’s just unfair to say to somebody, ‘You’ve sacrificed over the last 40
years — you’ve given up wages, you’ve negotiated a good health care plan, and
now we’re going to ask you to take 50 percent of the health care plan you
negotiated.’”
Myles Calvey, IBEW 2222
business manager and a vice president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said
Trumka’s hesitation is understandable, given the tough negotiating positions
labor unions often find themselves in. “Our frustration in the union business
is we always have to fight, right from the beginning, when someone says, ‘I
want to be part of the union,’” he said. But, on the other hand, he added,
health care could be “one less thing we have to fight about.”
“It’s going to take a strong
Democrat,” said Calvey, who is supportive of the resolution and of a Sanders
presidency. “We’re going to end up in dust, so we have to understand that the
only thing that’s important is our health.”
Weingarten, of the American
Federation of Teachers, also expressed her opposition to a
single-payer plan like the Medicare for All plan authored by Sanders, which
would eliminate most private insurance, despite Sanders’s assurances. On
September 23, she wrote an
op-ed for Politico that argued for the coexistence of public and
private options in health care, and for Medicare as “a floor, not a ceiling.” “Preserving
the option for employers and unions to continue to innovate in health
care is critically important,” she wrote. AFT, which supported Hillary Clinton
in 2016, has yet to endorse a candidate for 2020.
A member of the AFT, Ben
Curttright, responded
in Jacobin, questioning why Weingarten had taken a stand against Medicare
for All, which AFT endorsed in 2018, and repeated a private health insurance
talking point she made on Hill TV: “The one thing I am afraid of is that in
many of the different plans, that if you have too short a horizon in terms of
when insurance goes, you’re taking things from people that people rely on right
now,” Weingarten told Krystal Ball. (Weingarten then responded
on Medium.)
The International Association
of Fire Fighters, one of the only unions to endorse a presidential candidate
yet this cycle with its vote for Biden, has been staunchly opposed to Medicare
for All. “The unique aspect of our profession requires a unique health care
coverage,” said Harold Schaitberger, the president of IAFF, in August. It’s
unclear whether the delegate for the Professional Fire Fighters of
Massachusetts was present for the Medicare for All resolution vote.
Proponents of the
Massachusetts AFL-CIO resolution hope that it will encourage other statewide
groups to support similar measures and, eventually, build a larger movement for
Medicare for All and other left-wing policies. “This is a really old model of
how to build support,” said Russ Weiss-Irwin, a middle school ESL teacher in
Boston and member of the AFT. “It’s a way to build consciousness among a small
group of people.”
In July, the Texas
AFL-CIO endorsed
a similar resolution encouraging its state lawmakers to support
Medicare for All and similar local legislation. The Massachusetts delegates
also endorsed
resolutions supporting comprehensive immigration reform and a just
transition to a green economy that describes the “the twin crises of climate
change and economic inequality.” (In his Fox News interview, Trumka was
noncommittal on the Green New Deal, saying that the AFL-CIO would support
candidates who made the economy work for working people.”)
“I’m very happy that members
spoke up,” Kontos said. “We want to encourage this kind of involvement.”
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