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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Workers’ rights are under attack.
Our outdated labor laws have been chipped away and weakened by anti-worker legislators. Every day, we hear about corporations openly union-busting and retaliating against working people without consequence.
2020’s growth in pay inequity between workers and CEOs confirms the “executive base salary reductions” touted during the COVID-19 crisis were just lip service, per this year’s AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch report.
Workers at the Hispanic Society, which runs a museum and library in upper Manhattan dedicated to the arts and literature of Spain and Latin America, this week voted to join UAW Local 2110.
Actors' Equity Association has partnered with the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI), the ventilation, indoor air quality and air balancing arm of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation (SMART) workers to release a new model ventilation standard for li
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On Wednesday, New York City held a ticker-tape parade to honor the essential workers who helped the city through the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hometown Heroes Parade kicked off at 11 a.m.