Health Care

Health care is a basic human right.  America’s labor movement has worked for more than a century for guaranteed high-quality health care for everyone.  The Affordable Care Act is a historic milestone on this journey, but we still have a long way to go.

America must continue moving forward toward a more equitable and cost-effective health care system. Moving forward means working with employers to demand health care payment and delivery reforms to control costs, allowing people of all ages to buy into the equivalent of Medicare through a public plan option and allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.  Of course, the most cost-effective and equitable way to provide quality health care is through the social insurance model (“Medicare for All”), as other industrialized countries have shown. 

The worst thing we could do is move backward by repealing the Affordable Care Act or its key provisions; privatizing Medicare or turning it into a voucher program; raising the Medicare eligibility age; increasing Medicare co-pays and deductibles or otherwise cutting Medicare benefits; or taxing employment-based health care benefits. 

More about this issue:

Aug 25, 2023 | News Story

This week, Teamsters voted by an overwhelming 86.3 percent to ratify the most historic collective bargaining agreement in the history of UPS.

Aug 25, 2023 | News Story

The actors, stage managers, bartenders and servers of Drunk Shakespeare in New York City, the longest-running of the productions nationwide, are now the fourth company of the theatrical franchise to unionize as Drunk Shakespeare United.

Aug 25, 2023 | News Story

Postdoctoral Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai voted to authorize their elected bargaining teams to call a strike if circumstances justify.

Aug 25, 2023 | News Story

Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) members at FT Specialist, an editorial division of Financial Times, overwhelmingly ratified a groundbreaking first collective bargaining agreement.

Aug 18, 2023 | News Story

Dozens of Scholastic Union members rallied at the company’s headquarters Wednesday to protest Scholastic’s slow-walking of contract negotiations and refusing to offer a fair deal, including retroactive pay and remote work rights, to workers.

Aug 18, 2023 | News Story

There are only weeks left before union contracts for 150,000 UAW autoworkers at the Big Three expire on September 14.

Aug 11, 2023 | News Story

After a nationwide organizing effort involving two separate unions, workers have won union recognition at the Brooklyn-based documentary powerhouse Story Syndicate.

Aug 11, 2023 | News Story

Student workers from across The New School have officially filed as The New Student Workers Union (NewSWU) to become part of ACT-UAW Local 7902, which also represents Part-Time Faculty, Academic Student Workers (as SENS-UAW), and Student Health Center providers (as SHENS) at The New School, plus

Aug 11, 2023 | News Story

On Monday, thousands of customers and allies organized leafleting events outside of not-yet unionized Starbucks stores nationwide.

Aug 11, 2023 | News Story

Unionized workers at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City have ratified a contract by a 97% margin after two years of negotiations. Staffers across departments, including curators, conservators, educators, and public programming team members, unionized through Local 2110 UAW in October 2021.