The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, also known as Obamacare, presents challenges to the multiemployer plans through which some unions bargain collectively to provide health care insurance for their members.  These plans, often called Taft Hartley Plans, currently cover about 26 million workers, families, and retirees.  Unless there is a major regulatory change made by Health and Human Services, these union negotiated plans will be struck a harsh blow once the exchanges go into effect in 2014.

A quiet effort by many unions to persuade the Obama administration to make this change is now becoming very public.

In an Op Ed published in The Hill, Joseph T. Hansen, President of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), said,

But as currently interpreted, the ACA would block these plans from the law’s benefits (such as the subsidy for lower-income individuals and families) while subjecting them to the law’s penalties (like the $63 per insured person to subsidize Big Insurance). This creates unstoppable incentives for employers to reduce weekly hours for workers currently on our plans and push them onto the exchanges where many will pay higher costs for poorer insurance with a more limited network of providers. In other words, they will be forced to change their coverage and quite possibly their doctor. Others will be channeled into Medicaid, where taxpayers must pick up the tab.

In addition, the ACA includes a fine for failing to cover full-time workers but includes no such penalty for part-timers (defined as working less than 30 hours a week). As a result, many employers are either reducing hours below 30 or discontinuing part-time health coverage altogether. This is a cut in pay and benefits workers simply cannot afford. For example, a worker making $10 an hour that has his or her schedule cut by six hours a week would lose $3,100 a year in income. With millions of workers impacted, this would have a devastating effect on our economy.

Alaska UFCW

The effort of unions to persuade the Obama administration to change the regulations in order to resolve the problems was reported in the January 30, 2013, Wall St. Journal.

“Top officers at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, theAFL-CIO and other large labor groups plan to keep pressing the Obama administration to expand the federal subsidies to these jointly run plans, warning that unionized employers may otherwise drop coverage.”

“We are going back to the administration to say that this is not acceptable,” said Ken Hall, general secretary-treasurer for the Teamsters, according to the WSJ article.

Many unions have been working through the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP) to find a solution.  In a memorandum to the Department of Health and Human Services, the NCCMP stated:

If subsidies are available only for plans purchased through Exchanges, employers contributing to multiemployer plans will face tremendous economic pressure to stop contributing to multiemployer plans…. Many employers will feel the need to drop coverage and access the subsidies to remain competitive.

On April 16, 2013, the United Union of roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers International President Kinsey M. Robinson issued a statement calling for a repeal or complete reform of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA).  He stated that the union has supported President Obama for both terms in office but that the union’s concerns “over certain provisions in the ACA have not been addressed, or in some instances, totally ignored.”

“In the rush to achieve its passage, many of the Act’s provisions were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences that are inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer sponsored coverage could keep it.  These provisions jeopardize our multi-employer health plans, have the potential to cause a loss of work for our members, create an unfair bidding advantage for those contractors who do not provide health coverage to their workers, and in the worst case, may cause our members and their families to lose the benefits they currently enjoy as participants in multi-employer health plans,” Robinson stated.

The Cornell University Industrial and Labor Relations School recently held a special workshop on The Affordable Care Act:  Impact on Multiemployer Plans.  The materials from that educational event are available here.

So far there is no adequate answer from the Obama administation to the efforts of unions to resolve the issues.  The state exchanges must be in place by October of 2013 so that they are ready to go byJanuary 1, 2014.

Many of the unions involved contend that regulations for the ACA could be written to allow the employers that pay into these union negotiated plans to receive the same subsidies that employers will receive in the exchanges.  So far, that has not happened.

This is one of many conundrums that face unions as the costs of health care in our corporate-controlled, profit-oriented system make the maintenance of health benefits increasingly difficult to achieve.
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 16 arrested in Charleston, WV

Charleston,West Virginia. April 1, 2013.  They boarded buses and cars before dawn, some the night before, coming from the coalfields of Illinois,Pennsylvania,Kentucky,Virginia,Ohio,Indiana, and all acrossWest Virginia.  By10:00 AM over 7,000 had packed into the giant Charleston Civic Center to voice their support for the 23,000 miners and their families who face the loss of their lifetime health benefits in a bankruptcy scam.

In a series of mergers and deals, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal transferred their contractual health benefit obligations to Patriot Coal.  InSt. Louis,Missouri, in March, 2013, Patriot Coal filed in bankruptcy court seeking to terminate the United Mine Workers (UMWA) contract and set up instead a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) for the retirees and families. 

Patriot seeks to put only a pittance into the VEBA, vastly underfunding it.  UMWA President Cecil E. Roberts has said this plan would “put thousands of retired coal miners, their dependents or their widows on the path to financial ruin, worsening health conditions or even death.”

The UMWA pioneered in healthcare benefits and pensions when they battled coal operators and the American Medical Association to establish the UMWA Health & Welfare Fund.  John L. Lewis and the union defied accusations of socialized medicine to set up miners’ clinics and built the miners’ hospitals that serve today as the backbone of health care in Appalachia.  The UMWA won early retirement with family coverage for miners who retired before they were 65.  These achievements of the miners’ struggles are under attack by Patriot, Peabody, and Arch.  Most unions, following the lead of the UMWA, have negotiated early retirement with employers picking up the cost of health care until Medicare kicks in.  The attack on UMWA retirees is a snapshot of what employers have in store for union negotiated early retirement plans.

The miners’ fight is winning political support.  The West Virginia state Senate and House of Delegates have passed resolutions calling on Patriot Coal to meet its commitment to provide pension and health benefits to miners.  Elected leaders are feeling some heat, judging by the number of the powerful who appeared at the Civic Centerto express their support. 

West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin greeted the crowd.  “I’m fromLogan County the heart of coal mining…I’m honored to stand shoulder to shoulder with you for the benefits of our retired miners.”

Dan Kane, UMWA Secretary Treasurer spoke.  “To cast aside those who earned benefits through decades of back breaking labor is like taking money—it’s theft.” 

Kane called for a Congressional investigation.  “Who’s looking into this conspiracy?  We will fight to protect our health care no matter what it takes.  We will follow these robber barons and we will shine the light of truth on these evil deeds.  We are on the right side of history.”

West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller appeared through a video.   ”We must hold Peabody, Arch and Patriot to the promises they have made,” Rockefeller said.  He spoke of the introduction of the Coal Accountability and Retired Employee Act.

Representative Nick Rahall of West Virginia declared that “In 1912 Mother Jones said that the labor movement was a command from God Almighty.”  He said that the promise to the miners must be kept.  “No white flag…this is an uphill battle, but everyone here knows how to walk uphill.”

West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant described herself as a union member and said that this is an attack on all American workers.  “It happened at Century Aluminum to steelworkers.”  Tomorrow, she said it will happen to many more until we stop “these fraudulent transactions.”

“We can’t let this stand.  This is an attempt to take away the health care that was won on your broken backs, on your black lungs and on the memories of your fellow miners who took their last breaths in the coal mines,” Tennant said. “What’s worrisome is that tomorrow it can be an attack on construction workers, nurses, secretaries, teachers; who knows where it stops?”

West Virginia’s Junior Senator, Joe Manchin spoke against Patriot’s attempt to have retirement obligations dismissed in bankruptcy but also condemnedPeabodyand Arch for shifting their liabilities.

Manchin said he knows and talks to the owners of these companies.  “I’ve told them, where I come from, you can’t make wrong right. You can’t, no matter how hard you try.  You can’t shine crap, and by God, this is crap. You can’t make this stuff look good, you can’t make it smell good and you sure as hell can’t make it taste good.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka brought support from 12.5 million members of theAFL-CIO.  He said that when they dumped all the legacy costs onto one little company they knew it would fail.  He said that we’ve been “living and working under the threat of vulture capitalism.”  He addressed Patriot,Peabody, and Arch, “You can’t use the courts to steal because we won’t let you.”

UMWA President Cecil Roberts concluded the indoor rally.  He said that 42 have already been arrested inSt. Louiswhere the bankruptcy court is convened.  That includes all of the members of the International Executive Board of the UMWA.  He spoke of the broadening of this movement with faith leaders from the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, and the Catholic Church who would be joining today in non-violent civil disobedience and arrest in protest against this moral outrage.  He recognized the Teachers, CWA, USW, UAW, and the many unions that were in the hall.

Roberts said “We know who did this –they are wearing $10,000 suits and Gucci shoes.  We know where they are.  We are going to be like Jesus who threw the money changers out of the temple.”

At the conclusion of his speech people moved in orderly fashion to march to the headquarters of Patriot at Laidley Towers.  When the front of the march arrived, the streets were still packed all the way back to theCivic Center.  Many workers cheered from the steps of their office buildings.

Moms and dads sheltered the babies from the light rain and kept walking.  The camouflage UMWA shirts read “We are Everywhere” and “No Health Care, No Coal.” 

A brief rally continued across from Patriot.  Doris Crouse-Mays, President of the VirginiaAFL-CIO, said that this will be the “first time that I’ve ever gone to jail in my life and I can’t think of a better reason.”  She was joined in being arrested by KentuckyAFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan and West Virginia AFL-CIO President Ken Perdue.

Three religious leaders were among the 16 arrested, Father John Rausch, Director of the Catholic Committee on Appalachia,  Rev. James Lewis, Episcopal priest, and Rev. Donald Prange, St. James United Church of Christ, Lovettsville, VA. 

Before leading the group to sit down on the steps of the Laidley Towers, Cecil Roberts paid tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who taught non-violent resistance to unjust laws.  Roberts said we must build a movement that is more powerful than all of their money.  “We are over 7,000 today and we will be back with 20,000 and then 30,000.  If we can’t get justice in the court house, we will take it to the state house.  If we don’t get justice there, we must take it to the streets.” 

The powerful march and rally made the news not only inWest Virginia but also in the Wall St. Journal, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and across the country.    

Throughout hours of speeches about health care, neither politicians nor labors leaders mentioned the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, the health care reform that was passed in 2010.  Clearly the ACA provides no remedy for the health care crises that workers and retirees face. 

Only a national single payer plan, HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, can provide the needed care.  By removing the private for-profit health insurance companies and hospitals through HR 676, the nation can save $400 billion a year yet expand care to all.

HR 676 makes the wealthy pay a larger share and stops non-union employers from being able to underbid unionized companies.  With HR 676 there will be no more profiting from the denial of care. 

Until we can build the movement that can pass HR 676, everyone should join the battle to preserve the health care won through union contracts.  So do something to help the miners.  Ask your senators and congressperson to support the UMWA demands.

Sign the petition for the UMWA.  Check out the UMWA on facebook.  Watch for more demonstrations to come.

Distributed by:

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217

Email: nursenpo@aol.com

4/4/2013

Coal execs deserve “a cell next to Bernie Madoff” 

Peabody Coal Mine

St. Louis,MO. February 13, 2013.  Shirley Inman was arrested for peaceful, civil disobedience as she protested at the Peabody Energy headquarters against the corporate threat to rob miners and their families of the health benefits they have earned.  Inman, a member of United Mine Workers of America Local 2286 in Madison,West Virginia, spent 18 years driving a coal truck.  Head held high, Inman faced arrest with a determination much greater than her petite stature.  She is serious about this fight.

“If I can’t get my medication for my heart disease, I won’t be around much longer,” said Inman. “I’m a breast cancer survivor and I have coronary artery disease. Health care isn’t an option for me; it’s what I need to survive. I’ll do whatever it takes to make these corporate executives keep the promises they made – and if that means going to jail, so be it.”

Inman was arrested with nine of her union brothers, including UMWA Secretary Treasurer Dan Kane.  This was the second set of arrests at Peabody Energy, and it looks like there will be more to come.  On January 29 UMWA President Cecil Roberts was arrested with the first group, but he was not present for this rally because of negotiations.

In 2007, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal spun off a large chunk of their health care and retirement obligations to a new entity called Patriot Coal.  In a financial and bankruptcy transaction that UMWA Vice President from Alabama, Daryl Dewberry, described as “nickel slick”, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal are trying to wash their hands of responsibility for the health benefits for which they had signed contracts.

There was an air of militancy as more than 1,000 miners and supporters marched to the park and rallied between the St. Louis arch and the Peabody headquarters prior to the arrests.  There was emotion also.  Health care hits close to the heart.  The union has challenged the theft of benefits in court, and the case has been moved to St. Louis.  Concerned that bankruptcy law may not be adequate to protect these benefits, the miners say they will win this battle by appealing to a higher moral law.

Dan Kane, UMWA Secretary Treasurer explained.  “They intentionally put Patriot in the position for bankruptcy.  They want this in the bankruptcy court—they don’t want it in the court of public opinion.  This is about every man and woman who works for a living.  Health care and pension are not gifts.  You paid for it.  But these companies are using bankruptcy more and more.  Lawyers will get paid.  Million dollar bonuses will go to executives.  The heads of Patriot won’t suffer.  Those who did the work walk out with nothing.  That has to stop.  We don’t want their sympathy.  What we want is justice.”

“We want what we’ve earned,” said Kane.  “They want to go to their palatial homes—but they deserve a cell next to Bernie Madoff.  I’m tired of an economy that walks all over the workers.  I look for a day when we win the fight so every person who wants to can be in a union without interference.  And next, I look for a day when each and every one drops their tools and sits down for a day and tells the executives here’s what it’s like without us.”  The protesters roared approval.

Dewberry said the UMWA was founded in 1890 “when it was not popular to have all creeds and colors together, but we did it and we’ve been doing it for over 100 years.”  He said that miners are “used to adversity and we are all our brothers’ keepers. Peabodyleft scars in Alabama.  Arch left scars in Alabama.  They left black lung.  Miners took less benefits to assure health care.”
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 In his recent proposal, President Obama included a change in the cost of living adjustment (COLA) that will make cuts in Social Security benefits.  Ugly, hurtful cuts. 

This COLA cut is called Chained CPI.  It would do real damage by changing the formula used to calculate the COLA. 

It’s a real and harmful cut to the Social Security benefits you have earned.

The Chained CPI COLA cuts benefits more every year.  After 10 years, your benefits would be cut by about $500 a year for the average retiree.  After 20 years, your benefits would be cut by about $1,000 a year. 

Switching to the Chained CPIwould hurt both current and future beneficiaries.

Social Security should not be part of any such deal anyway.  By law, it can’t contribute to the budget deficit.  It’s only permitted to spend money from the Social Security trust fund, as affirmed by Clinton’s Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.   

Speaker Boehner and President Obama are tussling over a deal that would save around $1 trillion over 10 years.  Yet Bill Clinton has admitted that the U. S.could save that amount, $1 trillion,–in one year and each and every year, not 10 years–by adopting the health care system of any other advanced nation.   

Astounding, but true.  To end the deficit and bring care to all, Congress could simply pass Congressman John Conyers’ bill, HR 676, national single payer health care.  No cuts, no agonizing, no problem. 

In the meantime, only an uprising can persuade President Obama and Congress that we will not stand for these social security cuts—nor any other cuts to Medicare or Medicaid—the programs won through generations of struggles for a better life.

Tell President Obama that the Chained CPI is unacceptable. 

Call the White House (202) 456-1111. 

Call your Senators and representative with the same message:  202-224-3121.  

You can put in your zip code and find them here. 

“I’m telling you this so that everyone is very clear:  if you want to save Social Security from serious benefit cuts that will cause seniors to go hungry and have their utilities shut off, you have to act. You have to rise up and raise hell, because otherwise this train is going down the tracks — it won’t be stopped unless a lot of people get in the way NOW,” said Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive revolution:  How the Best in America Came to be.”  

He asks everyone to make the calls, then adds:

“But it is going to take people doing more. Make sure your parents, grandparents, and everyone else you know does something. Talk to people at work and at church and everywhere you go….  Show up at your congressperson’s office and let them know what you think. Organize a picket outside that congressional office.

“Do not hold anything back if you care about this issue. And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us raise some hell, this train headed down the track to cutting Social Security benefits, to taking money out of the hands of vulnerable innocents who had nothing to do with the deficits, will be forced to stop.”   

This message is brought to you by:

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217

Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org

Sitting with starlings (photo: Monocle / flickr)

The solution is Improved Medicare for All

After the November election, there will be a major effort in Congress to pass a budget deal that will make cuts in Social Security, raise the Medicare and Social Security eligibility age, and perhaps more–unless we act to stop it with a solution that is close at hand. 

There is agreement from the Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel to liberal economists Dean Baker and Paul Krugman that the pressure will be on to reach a Simpson/Bowles type of compromise.  Such a bipartisan plan would damage our most cherished programs and excuse the dastardly deed by asserting that the cuts are small and necessary because of the deficit. 

Those who relentlessly scream at us and finance ads to persuade us that the deficit threatens our grandchildren are obscuring the truth.  The fact is that the transfer of wealth from public funds and the rest of us to the super rich is the real crisis.  But those who have gorged themselves on this massive transfer of wealth also seek to undermine the Medicare and Social Security which are our grandchildren’s heritage from generations of struggles for a better life.

The projected cuts are not minor but very harmful.  Even a small decrease in the Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment would deliver an ever increasing downward push on benefits while corporations continue to threaten secure pensions by turning them into lump sums that will fade with the stock market. 

Raising the Medicare age to 67 would be disastrous.  There will be no affordable health insurance for those in their 60’s.  The Affordable Care Act allows private insurance companies to charge premiums three times higher based on age.  Under popular pressure, there were regulations placed into the health care reform bill to stop insurance companies from charging higher premiums based on pre-existing conditions.  But the companies were allowed to charge three times the premium based on age.  

Because of this allowed age discrimination, the Kaiser Foundation estimates that an individual of age 60 in 2014 with an annual income of $50,000 will pay a health insurance premium of  over $10,000, or over 20% of income.  That does not include out-of-pocket costs which can add up to an additional $6,000 annually.  That brings the total to 32% of income—a bankrupting figure. 

There is a solution that the single payer movement must place on the nation’s table.   Even Bill Clinton said that we could save $1 trillion a year if we adopted the health care system of any of the other developed countries in the world.  No more stewing over the deficit!

An Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, HR 676, would save Medicare, end the uncontrolled, gargantuan rise in all health care costs, ease the deficit pressure, and actually bring universal health care to the nation.  

This single payer legislation, HR 676, introduced by Congressman John Conyers and co-sponsored by 76 representatives, would divert $400 billion annually from profits and waste generated by the private health insurance industry into care for all.  Care would be expanded and costs bought under control through bulk purchasing, global budgeting, and the elimination of administrative expenses forced upon our system in the pursuit of profit. 

Doctors would be freed from insurance industry interference with care.  Patients would be freed to choose their physicians.  Dental, eyeglasses, hearing aids, prescription drugs, long term care, doctors, hospitals, home health, mental health—all medically necessary care would be included.  Our health care costs would stop driving us over the cliff and level off just asCanada’s did when that country fully implemented their single payer health care. 

Co-pays and deductibles would be banned ending today’s growing problem that health insurance policies are so miserly that even the insured forego care because they can’t afford it.

Our country spends about twice per capita what other industrialized nations spend on health care, yet our health care system lags far behind at number 37 in the world. 

So why are we even debating cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid when the solution is at hand that would bring us both better care and cost controls?  HR 676, an improved Medicare for All, is sitting in the Congress, awaiting the rising of a movement that will insist upon its passage.

Kay Tillow

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676

The workers at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas, are a spunky, tenacious bunch.  Amidst a recession with sky high jobless rates, many workers only dream of taking on the company to stop concessions.  Some have the courage to fight.  
 
These 3,600 workers, members of District Lodge 776, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), saw Lockheed Martin coming after their pensions and health care and made a plan to stop that from happening.  The company wants to impose a high deductible health plan that shifts the burden of payment for those who get sick onto the patients.  A family of three would have to pay $2,000 before the insurance payment kicks in.

As health policy expert Dr. John Geyman puts it:  “High-deductible plans equate with underinsurance.  These plans leave people with health care needs vulnerable to financial barriers to care.”

  
The members of District Lodge 776 voted by 94% to authorize a strike and have been on the picket line since April 23, 2012.  Lockheed Martin is the largest defense contractor in the nation will over $17 billion in contracts in 2010.

 
Until single payer passes, these contract battles for health care must continue

Until HR 676, single payer health care legislation, passes through Congress and assures care for everyone, these difficult struggles are the only way to protect the coverage workers have won.  Since 2007, the IAMAW has been a strong supporter of Congressman John Conyers’ single payer bill, HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.  The IAMAW at the international level is lending its full support to District Lodge 776 to help them win this contract fight.

 
In preparation for negotiations, Local Lodge 776 C President Augie Podsednik, leveled with the members.  “This will be the hardest negotiation,” he said, as he predicted that the company would try to impose LM HealthWorks, a high deductible health plan that had already been forced on the salaried workers.  “Everyone knows if you’ve talked to any salaried person on HealthWorks, what it’s going to cost,” said Podsednik.  “And if they take new hires’ retirement away, they will eventually come after ours.” 

That’s the other big issue.  The company wants to rope the union into accepting that those hired after this agreement will no longer have a defined benefit pension.  International IAMAW President Tom Buffenbarger, in a March speech to the District Lodge 776 membership, said that this scheme weakens the existing pension plan for those who would still have it.  When a young person coming in no longer has a pension, what kind of support will you get to protect yours, he asked.  “They want to divide you to sell the unborn.” 

We’ve All Got to Protect Each Other

James Little, who works on wing structures for the fighter planes they build and is the 776A Local Negotiator, said that the company pushed their LM HealthWorks and took away pensions from new hires at Marietta.  “We should not have to choose between making a house payment and taking a sick kid to the doctor.  We’ve all got to protect each other.”  Little said that the “LM HealthWorks is designed to shove major cost onto you and your family.  If you’re like me—a new hire—it will eat up your paycheck.”
 
Mark Stewart is a local union negotiator and a south end machinist who has worked at Lockheed Martin for over 34 years.  “This new insurance is the worst, absolutely the worst,” he said, adding that the supervisors, who were forced into this plan by the company, “will tell you that it’s worse than terrible.  It takes $650 out of your pocket first thing before you really get insurance, and then it pays 85-15.  They’re dealing us backwards.  They’re wanting to take away, take away.  It will wind up costing you $10 an hour just to cover your insurance for your co-pays—not to mention all your prescriptions.  Then if you go out of network, it’s a 65-35 that doesn’t even start until you pay $1,500.”

Stewart urged the members to become active and speak up.  “Don’t be a victim.  We have the power.  We are a union.”  Speaking for the negotiating committee, he said,  “We are only the negotiators—everything is won on the shop floor.”

Company Offers Lower Weekly Contributions to get workers to opt for LM HealthWorks

Paul Black, President and Directing Business Representative of District Lodge 776, explained to members what Lockheed Martin seeks to impose.  
 
“The company has proposed LM HealthWorks which is a high deductible and high out of pocket maximum plan that would work great, if you never get sick or have to use it. The company proposal only leaves one other insurance option, which is the Aetna HMO plan. The weekly contribution for LM HealthWorks is lower than the cost of the Aetna HMO. The company’s plan is to get the majority of you to select LM HealthWorks because of the lower weekly contributions. Then during the next round of contract negotiations the company will propose to take away the Aetna HMO leaving everyone with LM HealthWorks. WE FIGHT THIS FIGHT NOW OR IN THREE YEARS!!!”

The Lockheed Martin Health plan will wreck a lot of household budgets

Earnest Boone, a local negotiator who works as an overhead operator rigger, has worked at the company for over 30 years.  He said, “LM Healthworks is all about money.  It will wreck a lot of household budgets of our members.”  He urged the members to fight it.  “To keep what we have will take all of us standing together.” 
 
Robin Atkins, a local negotiator and finisher painter who has been with the company since 1978 pointed to Lockheed Martin’s high profit rate and lack of debt.  “Lockheed thinks our members won’t strike on these issues due to the fear of the recession.  Corporate greed is driving the company.”  He said that Lockheed “must stop trying to pad their pockets by picking ours.”
 
Larry Brown, a local negotiator who works as a materials handler and is a second shift shop steward, said that in 2011 Lockheed Martin negotiated at Marietta, Palmdale, and Sunnyvale and had big takeaways through LM Healthworks and removing the defined pension plan for future employees.  “Lockheed Martin needs to share the wealth with the bargaining unit that provides the skills….” 
 
 
A Big Percentage of Us Are Beyond the Preventative Stage

An aircraft assembler on the F-35 who is on strike expressed his concerns in a letter to Directing Business Representative Black. 

“The Company’s ultimate plan is to move us into LM HealthWorks which is a high deductible plan with higher out of pocket maximums which focuses on preventative care.  A fact that Lockheed Martin continues to ignore is a big percentage of us are beyond the preventative stage, we need good quality, affordable healthcare that takes care of us!

“Has Lockheed forgotten that we are the ones who worked with many chemicals and materials which at the time were considered safe, only to find out years later they were not safe. There were no MSDS’s (Materials Safety Data Sheets) to go by back then, none the company shared with us anyway.

“M.E.K. (Methyl Ethyl Ketone) ring a bell with anyone? We used that stuff like it was water we used it to clean everything and didn’t use gloves or respirators either!  When the company started making us use those orange rubber gloves we found out later those gloves didn’t protect us at all, we needed special neoprene gloves. There was no such thing as ergonomically correct tools and equipment either, so we now have worn out hands, elbows, shoulders, hips, backs and knees that need to be taken care of so we might be able to enjoy a few of those ‘Golden Years’ pain free.”

Solvents, chemicals, sealants—even asbestos

The letter writer continued: 

 “There is no telling how much of the solvents, chemicals and sealants we absorbed through our skin or inhaled into our lungs. Some of us were even involved in a few asbestos spills out on the line over the years before the asbestos was abated. Now we are working with new composites and all kinds of new chemicals and compounds and God only knows what will be found out about that stuff in a few years!

“To show their appreciation to those that stayed the course and did the work to make Lockheed Martin what it is today, this company wants us to pay more for our insurance which provides less coverage with higher deductibles and higher out of pocket maximums.

“Anyone else find it amazing that after we have accepted substandard packages in the past, within a few weeks after the close of negotiations how we read in the headlines about Lockheed Martin Corporate Executives receiving huge bonuses?

“Hey Lockheed ‘We are people, flesh and blood who have had some amongst our ranks suffer and die in order for you to profit’  I believe you can afford to share your reward.”

 
Help those who have the courage to wage this battle

District Lodge 776 is a spark of hope for all of us.  Those who have the courage to strike and are sacrificing to wage this battle deserve all the support we can give.  Messages of solidarity and contributions can be sent to:  District Lodge 776, 7711 Clifford St, Fort Worth, Texas 76108.  Please note on the check that this is for the strike fund.

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676

When EGT, an international corporate behemoth, threatened to break their union in Longview, Washington, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and their friends from the community organized a massive demonstration, sat down on the tracks and stopped a train.  They did it more than once.  The nation’s workers took heart at this bold action.

Richard Ahearn, Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Seattle, didn’t see it that way.  He acted instantly to seek an emergency injunction to block this “unlawful” solidarity.  Ahearn is further pressing an unfair labor practices complaint against the union.  Ahearn wanted swift justice and acted immediately when he saw the union as the lawbreaker. 

But Ahearn, at the time the Regional Director of the NLRB in Cincinnati, showed no such concern for law and order when an outspoken union nurse in Kentucky was fired on the ludicrous charge of flushing an intravenous line with saline without a doctor’s order.  Normal saline is an inert substance, not a medication, requires no physician’s order, and is not required to be charted.  It is used many times a day to clear or check intravenous lines.  Ahearn didn’t act with alacrity to help the nurse.  In fact, he did all in his power to help the company get away with the termination of a leading union advocate as the hospital sought to strike fear into the hearts of those struggling to build their union. 

Jane Gentry, RN, was fired from Louisville’s Norton Audubon Hospital where she had worked for 18 years.  She had an excellent record and worked in the hospital’s top notch open heart unit.  Gentry was the Legislative Director of the Nurses Professional Organization (NPO).  She and her colleagues had been fighting for a decade to win their union, first against Humana which owned Audubon, then against Columbia/HCA, the hospital company that paid $1.7 billion in fines for Medicare fraud when Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, headed it up.  Then Norton Healthcare purchased Audubon Hospital and continued the virulent anti-union campaign. 

Jane Gentry was one of the casualties of this war on the union.  She had been unlawfully suspended for union activity in 1997.  That NLRB case came to a conclusion in 1999 when Audubon Hospital was forced to post a legal notice stating that they would remove the suspension and cease unlawful anti-union activities.  Showing their contempt for labor law, the hospital posted the notice on July 12, 1999, and then they fired Gentry that very same day.  The next day the hospital made a scandalously erroneous report against Gentry to the Kentucky Board of Nursing (KBN) in an attempt to have her nursing license taken away.  They didn’t just fire her.  They tried to end her ability to work anywhere. 

The NPO filed unfair labor practice charges at the NLRB asserting that the firing and the report to the Board of Nursing were both in retaliation for union activity.

What did the law’s standard bearer, Richard Ahearn, have to say about the hospital’s contempt for the law?  Ahearn first told the NPO that he couldn’t see any evidence of “animus.”  That’s one of the elements that the labor law requires to be present in order to find that an employer broke the law.  It seems a silly step to go through, since 99% of workers could attest to their employer’s animus for unions.  Even after the union submitted a list of 55 documented instances, Ahearn was unable to see any animus.

Ahearn said there was “insufficient evidence” to establish a “nexus” between union activity and the discharge.  After four months of pensive consideration, he dismissed the union’s charges against the hospital. 

The hospital fired Gentry, denied her unemployment compensation, and attacked her nursing license.  This was disaster for the NPO.  This feisty union had been fighting in creative ways to protect its activists.  The union had reversed several firings of nurses by demonstrations.  With lots of hospital workers standing up and bold public actions, the community sided with the union.  The corporation often had to back off.  But this firing of Gentry coupled with the attack on her license made it difficult to show the solidarity needed.  If the hospital could get away with firing a leading union advocate and an excellent nurse, how would it be possible for others to take a stand?  Here was a case of retaliation so obvious that no nurse or hospital worker missed the message. 

When the NPO won Gentry’s license case at the Board of Nursing, the NPO filed a motion with the NLRB in Washington DC asking for reconsideration of Ahearn’s refusal to issue complaint.

In a rare action, the NLRB General Counsel granted the union’s motion to reconsider, overturned Ahearn, and ordered him to issue a complaint against the hospital for the firing of Gentry and for acting against her nursing license.

That was August of 2000—one tough year and a month since Gentry was fired.  Ahearn was not happy.  The NPO was a fighting union but with very few resources, no paid staff, and no lawyers.  The union was committed to protect those who had stuck their necks out  in the struggle.  NPO members researched the labor law, wrote the motions, filed the appeals, composed the briefs, found the witnesses, and prevailed against Columbia Law School graduate Ahearn when they persuaded the General Counsel of the NLRB to overturn Ahearn.

But the fight was just beginning.  When the Kentucky Board of Nursing made the strange move of reversing their “not guilty” decision on Gentry’s license, Ahearn used this excuse to further delay the NLRB hearing.  Delays are worse for workers than for the corporations.  Few workers have the economic resources to sustain a long battle.

The NLRB is supposed to act independently to enforce labor law, and the decision of any other court or agency should not determine its position.  But Ahearn took advantage of this reversal to postpone Gentry’s hearing.

Ultimately, the nursing license case went all the way to the Kentucky Supreme Court with the union winning the battle.  Gentry’s license was cleared of all charges.  Even if Gentry had been found guilty, the proposal for discipline was merely that she work under probation for a period of time.  She would still have been able to perform her job at Audubon, and many Audubon nurses worked while on a probated license. 

Based on the nursing license issue, Ahearn appealed to his Washington office in an attempt to get the NLRB to reverse their push for full reinstatement for Gentry.  He succeeded only in delaying the NLRB hearing.

Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and their supporters who stopped the trains are still waiting for the results of a suit concerning their contract with the Port of Longview.  Such a legal detail has not deterred Ahearn from proceeding with his action against the unionists.  But the legal proceedings in Gentry’s case were the excuse Ahearn used to delay the hearing.

It was not until September of 2002, three years and two months from the date that Gentry was fired, that Ahearn finally allowed this case to go to trial.   It was an outrageous delay.  When the Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in Gentry’s favor on the license, Ahearn ran out of excuses.

At the NLRB hearing, the hospital was in a jam.  With the subpoenaed disciplinary records laid out in the open, the hospital had no logical way to explain why Gentry was fired for flushing an intravenous line with salt water without charting it, while others had committed patient-endangering acts with no such penalty.

How to explain this?  The hospital’s Vice President of Nursing came up with a laughable answer.  She testified that “harm” or “potential harm” to the patient was not even considered when making decisions about discipline.  She said that when a nurse diverted narcotics to his personal use and was not fired he was acting within the scope of his nursing license, while Gentry’s harmless saline flush was outside the scope of her license.

In one of the cases brought out in the hearing, a nurse who was not fired tried to administer 90 units of insulin to the wrong patient.  The judge in the NLRB case, having some experience because of his diabetic son, asked, “But again, if you do that, you could kill somebody.”  The company’s top nursing official testified, “Yes, sir, yes, sir, we try to walk through what is the appropriate action to take from a discipline type of perspective.  I don’t necessarily take into consideration the potential outcome to the patient.”  That’s a shocking commentary on what this hospital corporation thinks is important.

In his decision the NLRB judge deemed the vice president of nursing not to be a credible witness.  The judge ruled for the NPO and Gentry.  The hospital appealed all the way to the Sixth Circuit Court.  The NPO won there.  Six years after the firing, Gentry was awarded $400,000 in compensation and her license was cleared.  Most of that six year delay can be attributed to Richard Ahearn.

Ahearn as an official of the NLRB was charged with protecting workers.  Yet he acted at every juncture on behalf of the corporation rather than the workers and is still doing so at his new post in Seattle where his complaint against the ILWU is scheduled to be heard shortly.

In the meantime, Longview ILWU workers are faced with the threat of non union shipments of grain to begin sometime in January 2012 in violation of the Port of Longview’s longstanding contract with the ILWU.  They will not allow this to happen and are calling on others to stand with them.  

When corporate powers are running out of control at break neck speed destroying workers lives, their jobs, pensions, and hope for a decent future, it’s time to stop the train.

Those who would like to express their solidarity can send messages and make donations to:  ILWU Local 21, 617-14th Avenue, Longview, WA 98632, Dan Coffman, President, Shelly Porter, Sec.-Treas., phone: 360.423.0950, fax: 360.423.5498, email: ilwu21@iinet.com

Kay Tillow, All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676

http://unionsforsinglepayer.org/, nursenpo@aol.com

On Thursday, October 13, 2011, union supporters and Occupy Louisville protesters gathered in Jefferson Square Park for a joint rally. This park at 6th and Jefferson is the location for the Louisville version of Occupy Wall Street where hundreds have gathered daily.

The unions were there to support Occupy Louisville and also to push for an ordinance to stop anti-union forces in the Metro Council from impeding collective bargaining through misuse of economic impact requests. The ordinance the union supporters backed was scheduled for a vote later that evening.

(Russ Cosgrove Addressing the Metro Council; media added by Ed. Staff)

Bryan O’Neill, Secretary Treasurer of Local 345, Louisville Professional Firefighters, spoke. “Over 10 million jobs in our economy have been shed,” he said. “Corporate profits since 2008 are up 44% while we lose jobs, we lose homes. Bonuses since the financial bailout of 2008 are over 30 billion dollars. Where does that leave us? Are those taxes coming back in to pay for the infrastructure? No.” The audience repeated the “no.” Read the rest of this entry →

"Franklin Statue at the Old Post Office" by FredoAlvarez on flickr. Statue of Benjamin Franklin, the first Postmaster General, at the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C

On September 27, 2011, in over 300 cities, postal workers will rally their communities to save the US postal services.  Letter carrier Michael Plaskon has written a short essay to help us to understand the effort to destroy this public service so that it can be privatized for profit.  

What’s the real story behind the postal crisis?

By Michael G. Plaskon, Executive Vice President, National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 84, Pittsburgh, PA.

In every Congressional District across America, Postal Service unionists are organizing rallies to be held on Tuesday, September 27, 2011. The National Association of Letter Carriers is collaborating with the American Postal Workers Union, National Postal Mailhandlers Union, and the National Rural Letter Carriers Association to hold rallies at every elected representative’s office to make the point that only Congress can fix the financial difficulties facing the United States Postal Service (USPS).  Congress passed a law in 2006 placing the postal service in its current fiscal situation, and it is only Congress that can solve the problem by enacting H. R. 1351.

Neither workers nor our unions caused this crisis.

In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.  This law requires the Postal Service to do something that no other business or government agency has to do–pre-fund its FUTURE retiree health care benefits.  This is a 75 year liability that has to be paid in 10 years.  The Postal Service makes a payment of approximately $5.5 billion on September 30 at the end of every fiscal year to meet this obligation.  The Post Office has been paying these benefits the past four years into a trust fund for employees who have not even been born yet.  This is the burden that is creating the “financial crisis” for the Post Office.  The recession that has gripped America the past few years has undoubtedly affected the Postal Service, but even in the worst economic times since the great depression, the USPS has had a net profit of $611 million dollars.  Unfortunately, the red ink associated with the post office is the mandated pre-funding since 2006. Read the rest of this entry →

Valley, snow covered mountains in background, "In Glacier National Park," Montana. by The U.S. National Archives

In 2009 when the Washington beltway was tied up with the health care reform tussle, Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the all powerful Senate Finance Committee, said everything was on the table–except for single payer.  When doctors, nurses and others rose in his hearing to insist that single payer be included in the debate, Baucus had them arrested.  As more stood up, Baucus could be heard on his open microphone saying, “We need more police.”

Yet when Senator Baucus needed a solution to a catastrophic health disaster in Libby, Montana, and surrounding Lincoln County, he turned to the nation’s single payer healthcare system, Medicare, to solve the problem.

Baucus’ problem was caused by a vermiculite mine that had spread deadly airborne asbestos killing hundreds and sickening thousands in Libby and northwest Montana.  The W. R. Grace Company that owned the mine denied its connection to the massive levels of mesothelioma and asbestosis and dodged responsibility for this environmental and health disaster.  When all law suits and legal avenues failed, Baucus turned to our country’s single payer plan, Medicare.    

The single payer plan that Baucus kept off the table is now very much on the table in Libby.  Unknown to most of the public, Baucus inserted a section into the health reform bill that covers the suffering people of Libby, Montana, not just the former miners but the whole community—all covered by Medicare. 

• They don’t have to be 65 years old or more.
• They don’t have to wait until 2014 for the state exchanges. 
• No ten year roll out—it’s immediate. 
• They don’t have to purchase a plan—this is not a buy-in to Medicare—it’s free. 
• They don’t have to be disabled for two years before they apply. 
• They don’t have to go without care for three years until Medicaid expands. 
• They don’t have to meet income tests. 
• They don’t have to apply for a subsidy. 
• They don’t have to pay a fine for failure to buy insurance. 
• They don’t have to hope that the market will make a plan affordable. 
• They don’t have to hide their pre-existing conditions. 
• They don’t have to find a job that provides coverage.  

Baucus inserted a clause in the Affordable Care Act to make special arrangements for them in Medicare, and he didn’t wait for any Congressional Budget Office scoring to do it.
Read the rest of this entry →