Health Care

Health care is a basic human right.  America’s labor movement has worked for more than a century for guaranteed high-quality health care for everyone.  The Affordable Care Act is a historic milestone on this journey, but we still have a long way to go.

America must continue moving forward toward a more equitable and cost-effective health care system. Moving forward means working with employers to demand health care payment and delivery reforms to control costs, allowing people of all ages to buy into the equivalent of Medicare through a public plan option and allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.  Of course, the most cost-effective and equitable way to provide quality health care is through the social insurance model (“Medicare for All”), as other industrialized countries have shown. 

The worst thing we could do is move backward by repealing the Affordable Care Act or its key provisions; privatizing Medicare or turning it into a voucher program; raising the Medicare eligibility age; increasing Medicare co-pays and deductibles or otherwise cutting Medicare benefits; or taxing employment-based health care benefits. 

More about this issue:

Jan 11, 2019 | News Story

After nearly two years of unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a new contract to replace the Lab Agreement with the Broadway League, members of Actors’ Equity Association have declared a strike calling for a halt to all new show development work with members of the Broadway League.    

Jan 11, 2019 | News Story

The N.Y. Campaign for Patient Safety, a coalition of nurses, caregivers and healthcare advocates from around New York, is calling on state Senators and Assembly Members to support and pass minimum safe staffing ratio legislation in hospitals and nursing homes.

Jan 11, 2019 | News Story

Hundreds of union construction workers from across New York took to the State Capitol in Albany this week to demand that elected officials pass a public works bill which would also designate all work at Hudson Yards as prevailing wage.

Jan 11, 2019 | News Story

SAG-AFTRA and New York Public Radio (NYPR) this week announced that they have reached a Voluntary Recognition Agreement that will add over 25 new employees – including reporters for the news site Gothamist – to the union’s longstanding collective bargaining unit, which covers approximately 175 wo

Jan 11, 2019 | News Story

Editorial staffers at Refinery29, a web site focused largely on Millennial women, are the latest to unionize under the Writers Guild of America East.

Dec 14, 2018 | News Story

The city’s Housing Authority and Teamsters Local 237 have struck a deal on a new contract that will for the first time allow employees to do weekend maintenance work at NYCHA housing.

Dec 14, 2018 | News Story

Nearly 20 union leaders were arrested and hundreds of faculty, staff and students demonstrated in the wintry cold Dec. 10 to demand full funding for the City University of New York.

Dec 14, 2018 | News Story

Staffers at New York Magazine on Wednesday morning asked management to voluntarily recognize an editorial union, joining a host of other news and magazine organizations that have similarly unionized in recent years.

Dec 14, 2018 | News Story

Writers and editors at Slate have voted nearly unanimously to green-light a strike if management refuses to agree to a fair contract. Slate’s editorial employees, represented by the Writers Guild of America–East, authorized the potential strike by a vote of 52 to 1.

Dec 14, 2018 | News Story

After an almost two-year fight for a fair contract, employees at Law360, a LexisNexis-owned legal news site, successfully secured a first-ever tentative agreement covering 170 workers.