Health care and unions

Here are some excerpts from remarks made by Stewart Acuff at the Health Care Industry Conference in Chicago on March 21, 2007:

Apart for the lack of national health insurance, one of the biggest reasons for the rising number of people without health insurance is the long-term corporate and right wing attack on the labor movement and collective bargaining in this country. Non-union workers are five times more likely to lack health insurance coverage than union members. So it is no coincidence that as the freedom to form unions has come under attack — as more and more workers are non-union while fewer are protected by a union contract — that the number of people in this country who lack health insurance has increased.

So if you want to fix the health care mess in this country — we not only need national health insurance — we need to restore workers’ fundamental human right to form unions and bargain collectively!
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The Employee Free Choice Act is the most important legislative proposal since passage of the Wagner Act to protect the fundamental human right of America’s workers to form unions and bargain collectively. Earlier this month, the Employee Free Choice Act – HR 800 – passed the US House of Representatives. This is a tremendous accomplishment. Who would have thought a year ago that in 2007 the House of Representatives would pass this historic landmark bill?

The Employee Free Choice Act does three critical things: it provides for union recognition based on democratic majority sign-up, it provides for first-contract arbitration, and it provides for stiffer and quicker penalties for illegal employer conduct.

Now, of course, the Senate needs to pass it.