“The ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”Posted on 07/16/2013 8:56:59 AM PDT by neverdem
Last Thursday, in remarkably blunt language, the heads of three major labor unions – James Hoffa of the Teamsters, Joseph Hansen of UFCW, and Donald “D.” Taylor of UNITE-HERE — wrote a letter to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid denouncing Obamacare’s impact on employer-sponsored health insurance. Some of the highlights:
“The ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”
“This vision [of universal health care] has come back to haunt us.”
“Our persuasive arguments have been disregarded and met with a stone wall by the White House and the pertinent agencies. This is especially stinging because other stakeholders have repeatedly received successful interpretation for their respective grievances,” such as the employer mandate delay.
“We have a problem, you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe.”
“Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios.”
“The law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week . . . many of them are doing so openly . . . fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.”
“We can no longer stand silent in the face of elements of the Affordable Care Act that will destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.”
“The law as it stands will hurt millions of Americans including the members of our respective unions.”
The irony, as I note in Forbes, is that historically, unions opposed government-run health care because a big part of the value that unions provided their members was health benefits. Members have less incentive to pay union dues if they can get health benefits elsewhere:
What a lot of people may not realize is that for much of our history, labor unions opposed universal coverage. “Unions…derive some advantage of good will, power, or profit from serving as a financial intermediary in health care,” writes Paul Starr in his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the American health-care system, The Social Transformation of American Medicine.
If unions’ role in negotiating health coverage is taken over by the government, unions lose a big chunk of their utility. “Employers and unions had both tried to use medical care to strengthen their hand in the battle for workers’ allegiances,” Starr continues.
Labor unions opposed FDR’s half-hearted attempt at universal coverage, and split on Truman’s related proposal. Unions were fine with Medicare and Medicaid, because health benefits for retirees and poor people weren’t as relevant to their interests. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the goals of progressives and labor unions became closely aligned on national health care.
Now, my primary concern isn’t the power and influence of labor unions—rather, it’s the ability of Americans to have access to good jobs and affordable health insurance. And those latter goals are best achieved in a system where people buy health coverage for themselves, instead of getting it through their employers or the government.
That Obamacare encourages more people to buy insurance on their own, in part by incentivizing employers to drop health coverage, is one of the law’s few salutary qualities. It’s unsurprising that this outcome makes labor unions unhappy. But they had every opportunity to take the bill in a different direction in 2009. That they didn’t is no one’s fault but their own.
—Avik Roy is a columnist at NRO and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at @avik.
Hey, it’s not our fault. We didn’t read the friggin thing.
What is funny about this is that he unions were all on board with Obama care when it was being railroaded through congress. They were too stupid to read the bill or to think about what it meant before they helped to pass it. In that sense they are getting what they deserve. Sadly- Innocent American are being punished too.
You idiots wholeheartedly supported it. You live with it.
It's YOUR president and YOUR healthcare and YOUR FAULT.
It might actually be worth it, then.
Screw them, where those Obama butt kissers when we needed them?
They pushed it because they didn’t give a g-d about the rest of the country, who they THOUGHT would be footing their bills. They’re used to DOING to screwing, and they were all for THAT to continue.
They are finally reading it and not liking what they are finding in it.
Too bad somebody didn’t read the damn thing before they passed it.
But, hey, y’all can trust Nancy. It will be good for you. It won’t taste any worse than a spoonful of caster oil. [/s]
This is not just crying over spilled milk ... it’s more calculated than it seems.
Some years ago a friend of a friend of mine was staring up a restaurant in a union hotel. He was simultaneously negotiating with the union and trying to drum up investors. The union rep was perfectly reasonable until the most important potential investor walked into the restaurant. Foolishly, they had told the rep how important the investor was. Whereupon she started screaming, literally screaming that they were trying to steamroll her and etc etc until they hastily promised whatever perk she was negotiating for at that time to quiet her down and prevent the investor from fleeing, leaving everyone out of a job.
The lesson is, they have excellent timing and they are willing to bring down the whole ship unless they get what they want.
Here, what they are angling for is that the government will subsidize their cadillac health plans by giving their members the same price cap that they would have gotten on the exchanges. Then everyone will want to join a union because they will get a much better plan than on the exchange, at the same price. These letters are a shot across the Administration’s bow, early enough to threaten to screw up the 2014 elections for the Democrats without actually doing it ... yet. When the Democrats get depserate they will gladly spend whatever it takes (out of our pockets) to stop the screaming. This will surely involve some convoluted finding that union plans are somehow eligible for the exchange subsidy / price cap.
Who is to blame? Was it just Obama pushing for it?
Easy... just stop voting like automatons! :)
My theory is that this criticism is by design. The unions are giving Obama and the other Marxists an excuse to get out of Obamacare without upsetting the Left.
Union leaders have sold out their members.
That's what you get for bending over for Pelosi and Reed and giving Obama the Satanic Kiss !
This could be a big problem for the Rats in next year’s elections.
The unions paid for nobamacare. Now they want their money back? Guess they didn’t read the part about this being a “where is, as is” deal. Perhaps Pelosi can point out that section of the law for them.
Suck it, union pukes.
Union scum got what they pushed for.
Now they bitch about it.
How are those coal industry jobs workin’ out?
>> “the Very Health And Wellbeing of Our Members”
A coincidence of interests, but it’s still about the members as far as the union is concerned with seemingly little if any regard for the Country as a whole.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.