Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
How Corrupt Is That?
The AFL-CIO recently posted a health care survey on its web site.
And in the key question (question 21) about the future of the health care system, the AFL gives you a choice.
Health care reform should let people choose to have private insurance or a public health insurance plan.
or:
Health insurance should remain in the hands of private insurance companies.
There is no choice for single payer:
The hundreds of private health insurance companies should be replaced by a single payer.
Single payer is the choice of a majority of individual members of the AFL, a majority of Americans, a majority of doctors, nurses, health economists and small businesses.
But the AFL-CIO leaves it out.
Why?
Because the AFL doesn't want to offend the private health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, President Obama and the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate - who have taken single payer off the table.
Or as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it last week:
"Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer."
Many within the AFL-CIO, including Rose Ann DeMoro, head of the California Nurses Association, and a key single payer supporter, know that the AFL is corrupt to the core.
Yet they bite their tongues.
It's either that, or banishment.
Or if they criticize, the criticism is so mild as to go unnoticed.
Andy Coates is an MD and steward in the Public Employees Federation of the AFL.
"Everyone knows that single payer is supported by many within labor," Coates said yesterday. "Over 500 union organizations, including 39 state AFL-CIO's and 126 Central Labor Councils, have endorsed HR 676 (the House single payer bill) which is co-sponsored by 76 members in the House of Representatives. Recently, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a friend of labor, introduced SB 703, a single payer bill, in the Senate."
"Since a large section of unions and union members supports a single payer solution to the health care crisis, it is unfair to construct a survey that completely ignores opinions from single payer advocates," Coates said.
It's not only unfair, Dr. Coates.
When the majority of your membership wants single payer.
And you don't even put it on the survey.
That's more than unfair.
The only question remaining is:
How corrupt is that?
- Posted in
25 Comments so far
Show AllI've seen worse poll questions and responses, especially from Newsbusters...so absurd they're funny. One of them was something like 'Do you think Obama will be a one-term President?' There was no option for simply 'no'.
"When the majority of your membership wants single payer....and you don't even put it on the survey.
How corrupt is that?"
Corrupt enough for those who developed the survey to land $six-figure salaries with big-pharma or big-insurance.
Ah, the Unions. Some are great - like the Longshoreman's Union or Teacher's Union. But as a whole, they had a chance to pony up, and they're not doing it; now's the time to kick them to the curb. I remember with much resentment local unions. Whenever they wanted support, the local progressive community came through. But after that, it was all voting Republican, making fun of liberals, discrimination, and bigotry. It's time to stop thinking that the Unions are our friends.
I agree, Wanderer.
That's why I have mixed feelings about the Employee Free Choice Act.
I do support legislation that protects workers and unions, but I share your opinion that most unions, especially the mega-unions which have absorbed and consolidated a multiplicity of smaller unions, have been co-opted by management. And self-serving players, e.g. Andy Stern of SEIU, pitch a form of New! Improved! "unionizing" in which unions are essentially centralized, top-down service delivery systems that provide "services" to members but virtually eliminate directly empowering workers or encouraging bottom-up leadership and formulation of policy.
The concept seems to be that these mega-unions, like the big box stores, will be led by what amounts to DC lobbyists with a constructive relationship with their opposite numbers representing employers. These grownups will wheel and deal, and the union members will reap the rewards of this service.
In short, Andy Stern poses as an anti-Fat Cat who is actually a Fat Cat himself; he wants to join the professional Ruling Class elite by abandoning the natural adversarial relationship between the Bosses and the Bossed. He openly sees himself as a Boss in his own right, and claims that his brand of "partnership" with the bosses is really the only approach that will benefit the rank and file.
This philosophy is an ironic return to legitimizing what are in effect "company unions"-- the management-leaning unions created to provide the illusion of worker solidarity that were formerly discredited and thrown out.
And soliciting opinions from workers with a loaded questionnaire is a fine example of the kind of authoritarian, top-down manipulation that corporatized mega-unions employ to support their specious claims that their policies are, first and foremost, are established by the membership, of the membership, and for the membership.
ยท Yr Obd't Servant
You got my point wrong. You gotta support the EFCA. I'm not trying to punish the unions or union organizing. I'm trying to add some perspective. EFCA helps small unions more than the big ones, I'll bet. That being said, it's time to hold the Unions' feet to the fire.
Yes, the unions are not our friends. Why should they care if non-union working people don't have insurance when theirs is too-big-to-fail? When the car companies pay out too much fake profit and can't meet their retirement obligations, they'll just take it out of taxes. They are among the drawbridge crowd: "We've got ours and you'll help pay for it."
**Or as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it last week:
"Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer."**
Maybe she keeps hearing it because the people that the house of representatives is supposed to represent need the issue settled in a way that includes them. I'm guessing that Pelosi's house of corporate interests has removed it from the table - like impeachment. She imperially declares things on and off the table and doesn't have to explain herself. Cartoonists should start drawing her with a tiara.
Not corrupt enough, if it was I'd be getting money for your health care system...
I am former member of UFCW Local 1059. Coordinator-class-run unions do not represent the interests of the working class. And people like John Sweeney, Andy Stern, and Ron Gettlefinger are members of the coordinator class, not the working class.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
Absolutely true. When I was in the UFCW, I worked as a bag boy at a Kroger in Newark, Ohio. I +literally+ would have made more money if I walked across the street to work at Wal-Mart. I worked part-time, made $5/hour, had $5/week taken out for union dues, and had zero benefits. At Wal-Mart, I would have made $5.50/hour, had no money taken out for dues (since there was obviously no union at Wal-Mart), and still had no benefits, of course. While at Kroger, I never once saw a union rep; the Local didn't give a shit about the part timers, though the union was, of course, happy to take our money.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
As a sidebar, I now work as a substitute teacher in the Cincinnati Public School district. The full-time teachers are unionized, but the union does not include the subs. My non-membership means they take no money out of me, which is good since, if they did, then I'd still have the same non-service I have now, except I'd then be paying for the privilege of being fucked by the union.
The bottom line is that unions are coordinatorist entities. A standard, two-class, Marxist analysis (which omits the coordinator class) does not explain why unions behave the way the do. A pareconish, three-class analysis which sees the coordinator class not only explains union behavior perfectly, it allows one to predict with nearly perfect accuracy how unions will behave in given situations.
Only pareconish organizations can represent the interests of the working class. Everything else will necessarily and inevitably lead to worker domination by coordinators.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
What unions?
Ahhh yes!
Democracy in a Corporate State.
Republicans were the problem and Democrats were going to be the answer...
Well, Corporations/Wall Street is the real problem and they own both parties.
Now what are you/we going to do?
I did over 15 years on Hollywood crews - non-union. Why? Because, no matter how hard I tried, The International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees would not let me, or any of my fellow non-union crew members, join.
How well does IATSE protect it's American workers? Key word - international. When nearly 40% of production went north to Canada to save money, IATSE did nothing, because they also represented Canadian crew workers. In other words, they got paid whether their American roster was working or not.
And every contract they've negotiated since the 80s resulted in less for the rank-and-file and more for the studios.
Unions in theory - great. Unions in practice - bullshit.
"Unions in theory - great. Unions in practice - bullshit."
I'd like to correct this. PARECONISH unions in theory: great. COORDINATORIST unions in theory: bullshit. COORDINATORIST unions in practice: bullshit. PARECONISH unions in practice: haven't existed yet, but there is every reason to believe that, when they do, they will work well to represent working-class interests.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
"Or as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it last week:
"Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer."
Sort of like "impeachment is off the table".
Who died and made her dictator?
if elected representatives do as they wish, and not as their constituents wish, they're not really representing, are they?
we are citizens without representation...
think about that during the next commercial break...
Doesn't anybody remember AFL-CIO's history? They're a monied union, not a true union as far as I can tell. In fact, back in the 1990s, John Sweeney allowed even the DLC to tickle the AFL-CIO to death financially speaking. The leadership needs to be reformed. Besides, if the AFL-CIO really was for helping workers, then why did they blindly choose Obama over Nader and Kucinich?
Not unlike the AARP that Mokhiber wrote about previously, unions are associations. Leaders and staff of these union/associations have some interest in maintaining the status quo. Many unions provide health care insurance or have strong relationships to the private insurance system.
This has to be taken into account when analyzing how unions act.
I was surprised when they didn't make the top ten opponents of single payer in Mokhiber's last article.
That said, I believe that the single payer movement should make alliances with receptive unions. And leaders from those unions should propose resolutions to support single payer. Unless unions are seen as proactive, their decline will continue.
"Many unions provide health care insurance . . . "
exactly
If fact, in part, many unions are health insurance companies.
"As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it last week: 'Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer.'
Yup, that's representative democracy in action for ya!
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins (unless the bitch's name is Pelosi) - Native American proverb.
I got this survey and that was the first question. Being the AFL/CIO I continued for a few more then realized it was completely dishonest. We be doomed! Nothing will change until people take to the streets and riot. There's nothing like a good riot to get the attention of: the media, politicians, other people and the world. Nothing has ever changed in the Untied States without people taking to the street. Untill then it's all a bunch of nothing.
ebpatton/DaveBronstein/frank1569
Thank you very much for some great postings. Especially this by Dave.....
"It's a very widespread fallacy to imagine that being "pro-labor" means blanket support for positions pushed by union leadership. This is terribly ironic, since the long-term trend of many unions is not fighting to defend the interests of workers, but rather selling out the workers via leaders' collusion with management."
And Franks point that they do NOT protect their American workers.
"Many within the AFL-CIO, including Rose Ann DeMoro, head of the California Nurses Association, and a key single payer supporter, know that the AFL is corrupt to the core."
This is exactly the truth about this Union and Andy Sterns too. Stern himself is nothing but corrupt.
It STINKS, I want to stink bomb the AFL-CIO, and stink bomb congress ! the stink of corruption STINKS and the whole world stinks from our stinking rotting stinkiness.
Stink up the white house and stink up Pelosi till they put single payer back on the table.
The evidence suggests public health care would have lower administrative costs and be more efficient so why not let it compete? aren't you guys over-reacting?