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.
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On Tuesday, October 12, Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer joined home care members and advocates in the Manhattan headquarters of 1199SEIU to urge Congress to pass President Biden’s Better Care Better Jobs Act.
More than 10,000 UAW John Deere members struck at midnight on Thursday after the company failed to present an agreement that met members’ demands and needs, in what's currently the largest private sector strike in the U.S. in two years.
On September 27, the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) certified Local 338 RWDSU/UFCW as the union to represent twelve agricultural workers employed at Pindar Vineyards in Peconic, New York.
At midnight on Oct. 5, 1,400 workers at four Kellogg's Co. plants in Battle Creek, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Memphis, Tennessee went on strike against the company.
New York State has added additional funding for a COBRA subsidy in the most recent state budget. This program provides assistance equal to 50% of COBRA/continuation premiums. Many of Equity members are still out of work, and as such have lost access to their union health insurance.
After weeks of strikes and protests, Nabisco workers last weekend voted to ratify a new contract and end their strike.
This week a coalition of legal services unions, tenants, community organizations, and elected officials sent a letter to the New York State Office of Court Admi
Teamsters Local 553 is expanding charges at the National Labor Relations Board against United Metro Energy Corp., owned by billionaire John Catsimatidis, after the company fired another striking worker last week.
Employees at Legal Services NYC, the largest civil legal service provider in the U.S., last Friday picketed to protest unnecessary and dangerous in-person court appearances.
On Physician Suicide Awareness Day, the Committee of Interns and Residents honors the lives of healers lost to suicide and commits to fighting for systemic change.