Winning True Health Security- How single payer could benefit unions and union members

We are very pleased to invite you to join other labor activists to a program with Rose Roach, National Coordinator of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. The theme of the 3-hour program is “Winning True Health Security – How Could Single-Payer Health Care Benefit Unions & Union Members?” It will take place on Tuesday, May 6 from 10:00 to 1:00 PT at the WA State Labor Council building, 906 Columbia St. SW  in Olympia. Coffee and snacks will be provided. You can register here. Please feel free to share this information with interested union members/leaders.

RSVP required. Indicate on RSVP form virtual attendance to receive Zoom link.

The labor movement has a proud history of winning good health care benefits for union members and our families, including Taft-Hartley multi-employer plans. Labor also played a central role in winning the Medicare and Medicaid programs for seniors, the disabled and low-income Americans. And yet today these gains are seriously eroding. Close to 100 million Americans either have no health coverage or are so underinsured that they cannot afford to use their insurance. Medical debt accounts for a majority of personal bankruptcies. The escalating costs of health care have caused bitter strikes and have forced many unions to forego fair wage increases while more and more healthcare costs have shifted onto the backs of workers. The COVID pandemic drove home the peril of tying health benefits to employment. And while healthcare costs in our country’s for-profit system are the highest in the world, we rank 28th in infant mortality and 24th in life expectancy. Ours is the only industrialized country that does not guarantee comprehensive health care to all its people. And now many of the gains we have made are being threatened by the political winds blowing from Washington, DC.

What can the labor movement do to protect and improve the gains we have made in health care? How can we help make access to health care a guaranteed right of all Americans? Rose Roach will present a clear explanation of how these challenges could be met if we take health care off the bargaining table and instead establish a universal, publicly-funded and administered health program at the national level – or at the state level to pave the way to a national plan. Presenters from our state will share a current legislative proposal for a universal state plan as well as related resolutions that have recently been adopted by a number of WA state labor organizations. There will be plenty of time for discussion in small groups.

Please join us. We know there are different viewpoints in the labor movement about health care. Come with your questions! Come with your solutions! 

In solidarity, 

Carey Wallace RN

Board Chair Whole Washington

Rachelle Martin   Chuck Pirtle Karen Strickland            Jim Howe             

Pres, TLM CLC   Pres, Kitsap CLC  Pres, AFT Washington Director, AFT WA Retirees