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:
As of Wednesday, November 1, open enrollment for health care coverage by the Affordable Care Act is open through December 15th.
Now more than ever, communities of color are under constant attack, and we can’t afford to put our livelihood at further risk.
Now more than ever, communities of color are under constant attack, and we can’t afford to put our livelihood at further risk.
This week, the labor movement demonstrated what union solidarity is all about. More than 300 union members boarded a flight in Newark, New Jersey headed for San Juan, Puerto Rico.
New York now leads the nation in ensuring that working families have access to Paid Family Leave.
On Monday afternoon, thousands of union workers from across NYC poured across the Brooklyn Bridge in an impressive display of solidarity with our IBEW Local 3 brothers and sisters who have been on strike for nearly six months.
The Broadway Presbyterian Church was packed on Wednesday morning as GWC-UAW Local 2110, the union of Columbia University’s graduate workers and teaching assistants, held a forum about their campaign.
On Thursday, organized labor in digital media counted a major victory.
Two weeks ago, long-time Teamster Local 813 member Eber Garcia Vasquez was deported. The Teamsters are continuing to work with his attorney and advocates to expedite his Green Card application so he can return to the U.S. and be reunited with his family.
This November, New Yorkers will be asked whether or not to hold a Convention to amend our state’s constitution. Important labor protections like collective bargaining, prevailing wage, workers' compensation, and public pensions would be on the chopping block.