Labor Notes: "I've Never seen this much anger at the Democrats from union people"

amborin

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Mar-03-10 01:04 AM
Original message

Labor Notes: "I've Never seen this much anger at the Democrats from union people"

Edited on Wed Mar-03-10 01:04 AM by amborin

Anger over Health Care Bill Creates Uncertain Future

by Jane Slaughter

snip

�I�ve never seen this much anger at the Democrats from union people,� said Jeff Crosby, president of a General Electric factory local near Boston, as he prepared a last-minute leaflet to hand out in the plant. �It�s worse than NAFTA.�

Top union leaders had bargained a compromise slowing down the health care benefits tax President Obama insisted on, but it was not enough to placate union members�and others�infuriated that Obama had broken his campaign promise not to tax benefits.

snip

Obama took a hands-off approach to the content of the bill as it crept through Congress. He didn�t insist on a public option nor a strong employer mandate to provide insurance. It was hard not to notice that the only issue on which he took a hard stand was taxing benefits.

At his meeting with a dozen labor leaders at the White House January 11, Obama was firm that a tax on benefits was a must-have�despite his campaign promise to the contrary. �We have a lot of video clips,� said Machinists President Thomas Buffenbarger.

Trumka...... In a January 11 speech at the National Press Club, he said, �In 1992, workers voted for Democrats who promised action on jobs, who talked about reining in corporate greed, and who promised health care reform. Instead, we got NAFTA, an emboldened Wall Street�and not much more. there was no way to persuade enough working Americans to go to the polls when they couldn't tell the difference between the two parties.�

snip

So labor leaders reached a deal with White House negotiators January 14 that accepted the tax they�d previously declared unacceptable. The deal announced by Trumka and his counterparts at Change to Win and the National Education Association would have exempted those in union-negotiated plans and state and local employees from the tax until 2018.

It also would have raised the threshold at which the tax kicked in for many other plans: those containing significant numbers of women, older workers, or retirees age 55 and up, or those in high-cost states, the latter affecting more than 38 million workers. Those provisions would have delayed those groups� hit as well.

Trumka�s goal was to exempt as many people as possible, union and non-union, from ever paying the tax, though only the velocity of health care cost inflation would have proved how successful he was.

�Most of the 31 million insured employees who would be hit by the excise tax are not union members,� Trumka noted before the deal was struck. But in the end unions bought extra time for their members at the cost of making themselves look self-interested. The deal will create awkward moments for union health care activists who�ve spent years trying to build broad coalitions.

STILL OPPOSED
Not all top union leaders backed the compromise plan. Buffenbarger told Labor Notes his members at Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics were already over the $23,000 threshold at which the tax would originally kick in.

�No bill is better than this bill,� Buffenbarger said. �We don't care what the amount is that they peg it to: because of inflation, whatever number will be gobbled up pretty quickly.�

snip

http://www.labornotes.org/2010/01/anger-over-health-care-bill-creates-uncertain-future