AFT PRESIDENT’S OPPOSITION TO MEDICARE FOR ALL IS A THREAT TO HER OWN MEMBERS
It is rain, sleet and snow that will greet CTU members on the picket lines this morning.
I hope that the strike ends soon.
I’m flashing back to a cold November morning a dozen years ago when our local was on strike over the cost of our health insurance.
Chicago weather is not a friend of organized labor.
If the Chicago strike lasts past Thursday, then the teachers will lose their health insurance and have to switch to COBRA if they want or need coverage.
The threat of losing health insurance should not be a factor in resolving the issues in this strike.
The fact that it is, demonstrates why the strikers’ own union president is so wrong about her opposition to a single national health care system and is doing a huge disservice to workers, including to union members.
The issues that separate the mayor from my teaching colleagues should be settled at the bargaining table. Teachers walking the picket lines this shitty morning have enough on their minds without worrying about Friday and the prospect of no health insurance.
As I wrote a while ago, Weingarten’s defense of work-based insurance with Medicare CONTINUE READING: AFT president’s opposition to Medicare for All is a threat to her own members. – Fred Klonsky