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"There are no safe planes without union machinists. If Boeing wants to restore its safety culture, its first order of business should be ensuring its workers are fairly compensated," said one senator.
"We're fighting for every family," said the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union that represents about 33,000 workers at commercial plane manufacturer Boeing, on Friday, after its members voted to reject a tentative contract offered by the company and go on strike. "We're fighting for the future of Boeing."
The work stoppage began just after midnight on Friday after 95% of workers represented by IAM District 751 voted to reject the proposed contract and 96% authorized the strike. The support of just two-thirds of the members was needed to initiate the walkout.
On Sunday, IAM District 751 President Jon Holden had expressed optimism about the tentative deal, which included a 25% raise for workers over the life of the four-year contract, a reduction in healthcare costs for employees, and an increase in Boeing's contributions to members' retirement plans.
But Holden said the union's leadership would "protect and support" however members chose to proceed with the contract, whose terms fell short of the 40% raise they had originally demanded.
The last strike at Boeing lasted 57 days in 2008, and the contract that ended the strike has been extended twice since then—with the union making concessions that resulted in higher healthcare costs and an end to unionized workers' traditional pension program.
"Workers are extremely eager to claw back lost ground on wages at a moment of crisis for Boeing," said Lauren Kaori Gurley, labor reporter for The Washington Post.
The work stoppage comes as Boeing is working to increase airplane production amid questions about its safety standards and manufacturing capabilities following an incident in January in which a door panel blew out of a 737 Max jetliner when the plane was mid-flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration required Boeing to limit its production of 737 Max jets after the accident, until it could meet quality and safety benchmarks, but output at the company's Renton, Washington factory "is far behind where Boeing wants," The New York Times reported.
Joe Philbin, a mechanic at the Renton facility, told the Post that unionized workers have "a lot of leverage—why waste that?"
"This is about respect," Holden told members Thursday night. "This is about addressing the past, and this is about fighting for our future... Boeing has to stop breaking the law, has to bargain in good faith, and we will be back at the table whenever we can get there to drive forward on the issues that our members say are important."
In addition to federal investigations into Boeing's manufacturing and safety standards after the January incident, the U.S. Department of Justice in May said the company had failed to meet conditions of a deal that shielded it from criminal prosecution over two deadly plane crashes in 2018 and 2019.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said Boeing's ability to maintain workplaces that are safe for employees—and the public that relies on the comnpany's planes—hinges on its treatment of workers.
"There are no safe planes without union machinists. If Boeing wants to restore its safety culture, its first order of business should be ensuring its workers are fairly compensated and protected from retaliation," said Markey, expressing solidarity with the striking machinists.
The United Auto Workers and the Communications Workers of America also expressed support for IAM District 751.
Throughout U.S. history, states have been the much-needed small laboratories that have succeeded in developing social innovations that eventually went national.
The State-Based Universal Health Care Act, SBUHCA or HR 6270, is a bill designed to make it easier for states to obtain federal funding for state-based universal healthcare initiatives and minimize legal challenges. An opinion article published on April 1, 2024 in Common Dreams was highly critical of this proposal and prompted this response.
The author expresses concern that the phrase "single-payer" does not appear in the State-Based Universal Health Care Act. The omission is intentional. Single-payer remains the goal, but mentioning single-payer in SBUHCA is likely to repel members of Congress who have opposed the Medicare for All Act(s) for decades. Under SBUHCA, advocates who feel that a public option plan or expanding Medicaid is the route to true universal healthcare will find, as confirmed by many studies, that there is no pathway to comprehensive and affordable universal care without eliminating the multi-payer private insurance system. So, while still possible, it's unlikely that states will discover an affordable alternative to meeting the requirements of SBUHCA without removing or minimizing the influence of private insurance.
The article states that Medicare is still our best federal healthcare program and that SBUHCA would end Medicare. State-based single-payer plans can expand Medicare, not end it. President Lyndon Johnson and Congress originally conceived Medicare as a single-payer, universal system. The Southern states strongly opposed it, perpetuating Jim Crow laws. Medicaid was the compromise that ultimately allowed Medicare to pass. There is no question that Medicare, as initially planned, would have been far superior. Still, our nation made progress, and the feds did not permit Southern states to ruin Medicare for the rest of the country. It's time to replace "Medicare for a Few" with Improved Medicare for All. With the expansion of Medicare Advantage (MA) and Accountable Care Organizations-Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (ACO-REACH), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) is making things worse. States could do something better and not worse.
Far from diverting attention away from national Medicare for All, state-based single-payer movements energize a national movement that has been stuck in neutral for years.
"States rights" has become a pejorative term, but it's not the utterly negative concept the article claims. Throughout American history, and much more often than not, states have been the much-needed small laboratories that have succeeded in developing social innovations that eventually went national. The primary provisions of the Affordable Care Act, for example, were first formulated in Hawaii and Washington and refined in Massachusetts before being implemented nationally. The same is true for women's suffrage, Social Security, the direct election of senators, the prohibition on indoor smoking, gay marriage, etc. While not all states immediately accepted Medicaid expansion, at least 12 states have expanded it after seeing how well it has worked in other states. So yes, we need to temporarily remove health policy from the federal government and allow states to model something better! State innovation waivers for Medicare have been part of the Social Security Act since 1967. CMS expanded waiver authority in 2010 by creating the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. By statute, CMMI has broad authority to negotiate innovative programs with states and is willing to discuss options before passing state legislation. Nevertheless, the review process could be more straightforward (as the article implies), and we are still awaiting the first state to apply for a single-payer waiver. However, one to three successful state models should be sufficient to jumpstart the federal movement.
The article is correct in saying that the Canadians had no federal health programs that had to be "busted up" to satisfy the desires of the provinces. Still, the situation was much more complicated than is commonly portrayed. In 1945, newly elected Saskatchewan Premier "Tommy" Douglas had to find a way to provide healthcare to southwest Saskatchewan's farmers after the Depression because lack of healthcare further devastated the province's economy. However, despite Douglas' impressive results over a decade, it took 20-plus years for other provinces to adopt the risky "socialized medicine," and only after a very sympathetic federal government in 1968 expanded its cost-sharing plan with a new tax and a set of principles that provinces needed to follow. The Canadian Parliament later enshrined these principles in the Canada Health Act of 1984, which, while unifying, still allows for considerable provincial variation. In Canada, the feds had to find new money to fund the popular programs. In the U.S., states would ask only to manage the money that the feds are already spending in that state. This history demonstrates that social innovation often arises out of a crisis of necessity and is best tried on a relatively small scale before attempting a national program. Just as in Saskatchewan, U.S. states feel the healthcare crisis today more acutely than does the federal government. This circumstance is why there is so much more action for single-payer at the state level than at the federal level.
If the bar concerning a state's obligations under a waiver is too low, as many have suggested, we must lobby to raise it, not reject the entire bill. We also must demand that the feds enforce federal healthcare laws, not blame the bill as inadequate. H.R. 6270, Section 1335(b) requires that waiver applications provide coverage at least as comprehensive as the federal programs the state universal program would replace. This provision should prevent states from watering down coverage when implementing a state-based universal healthcare program. If an audit indicates the required benefits are not adequately covered, the SBUHCA Medicare waiver for the state could be rescinded and those residents put back on Medicare.
How will the feds wrest control back from the states once a national plan is in place?According to HR 6270, and as consistent with most federal laws, additional enforceable regulations will be issued shortly after the law is passed. Such details as the scope and terms of the waiver and how the periodic reports and evaluations are to be conducted will be addressed in those regulations. However, it is highly unlikely that a state legislature will even want to "keep the money" to maintain a duplicate bureaucracy once a national program is enacted.
The article's author worries that state healthcare funding will have to compete with other state programs, and financing will be unstable. That is why state plans currently include dedicated trust and reserve accounts to fund only health benefits according to statutory guidelines.
Far from diverting attention away from national Medicare for All, state-based single-payer movements energize a national movement that has been stuck in neutral for years. It is much easier to organize and show progress at the state level because people are more motivated to work on the problems they see right before them. State legislatures are often more bipartisan than Congress, and it's somewhat easier to pass new ideas, even if it takes several sessions. There are now at least 19 states actively pursuing state-based, single-payer healthcare, involving hundreds of dedicated activists. In Washington and Oregon, for example, it has been quite exciting to watch legislators get behind and understand the single-payer movement and to see them push our states' congressional delegations in letters and resolutions to support national single-payer legislation even as they work to build universal healthcare locally. State legislatures are often less polarized than Congress. Also, many of our members of Congress have been state legislators. Advocates can orient state-level candidates and elected officials toward single-payer healthcare much more quickly than they can with members of Congress.
Participating directly in the Washington Universal Health Care Commission meetings has also been quite stimulating. To say that this two-track activity is moving us "backward" is not to understand what these states are actually doing. Except for a handful of Northwest Congresspersons, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who was a healthcare champion at home before being elected to Congress, writing the Medicare for All Act of 2019, and sponsoring the SBUHCA in 2018 after Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) had written it in 2015, it has been much more difficult to find interested federal representatives. Every state activist that we know would much rather move directly to a national program, but the interest and action are just not yet at that level in Congress.
One Payer States, a national organization promoting the creation of a federal, universal, high-quality, and affordable single-payer healthcare system, believes the most likely route leads through the states and strongly supports the SBUHCA. For more information, please go to OnePayerStates.org/current-events. The authors are all members of One Payer States.
Twelve years into states’ marijuana legalization experiment, public support for making marijuana legal nationwide has never been higher.
It’s been over a decade since Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize marijuana for adults. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s fair to ask: Has this policy been successful?
Absolutely. A policy of legalization, regulation, and education is preferable to a policy of criminalization, stigmatization, and incarceration.
Let’s be clear. Legalization didn’t create or normalize the marijuana market in the United States. The market was already here.
But under a policy of prohibition, this market flourished underground—and those involved in it remained largely unaccountable. They didn’t pay taxes, they didn’t check IDs, and they didn’t test the purity of their products. Disputes that arose in the illicit marketplace were not adjudicated in courts of law.
These policies are working largely as voters and politicians intended—and because they’re preferable to cannabis criminalization.
By contrast, under regulation, cannabis products in many states are now available from licensed manufacturers at retail stores.
Cannabis is cultivated, and products are manufactured, in accordance with good manufacturing practices. Products are lab tested and labeled accordingly. And sales are taxed, with revenues being reinvested in the community. Since 2014, retail sales of adult-use cannabis products have generated more than $15 billion in tax revenue.
Most importantly, millions of Americans—many of them young adults—are no longer being arrested for possessing a substance that is objectively safer than either tobacco or alcohol.
According to data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the annual number of marijuana-related arrests in the United States fell from 750,000 in 2012 to 227,000 in 2022, the last year for which data is available.
In short, these state-level policy changes have resulted in countless Americans being spared criminal records—and the lost opportunities that accompany them—in the past decade.
And contrary to opponents’ fears, cannabis use by teens has not risen in parallel with legalization.
According to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of high schoolers who use marijuana actually fell 30% over the past decade. Compliance check data from California, Colorado, Nevada, and other legal marijuana states show that licensed marijuana retailers do not sell products to underage patrons.
Also contrary to some critics’ claims, legalization states have not experienced any spike in either psychosis or mental illnesses.
According to findings published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, rates of psychosis-related health care claims are no higher in jurisdictions where cannabis is legal than in those where it’s not. Stanford University researchers similarly reported last year that residents of states where cannabis is legal exhibit no higher levels of psychosis than those in non-legal states.
Legalization is also successfully disrupting the illicit marketplace. According to a 2023 survey, 52% of consumers residing in legal states said that they primarily sourced their cannabis products from brick-and-mortar establishments. By contrast, only 6% of respondents said that they primarily purchased cannabis from a “dealer.”
Many consumers in non-legal states also reported that they frequently traveled to neighboring legal states to purchase cannabis products rather than buying from illicit dealers in their own state.
Twelve years into states’ marijuana legalization experiment, public support for making marijuana legal nationwide has never been higher. To date, 24 states have legalized the adult-use market.
None of these states have ever repealed their legalization laws. That’s because these policies are working largely as voters and politicians intended—and because they’re preferable to cannabis criminalization.
After a century of failed policies and “canna-bigotry,” the verdict is in. Legalization is a success, and the end of cannabis prohibition can’t come soon enough.