WASHINGTON, D.C. – In Case You Missed It: The Bryan Times highlighted Senator Sherrod
Brown’s (D-OH) legislation to protect striking workers’ health insurance. Brown’s Striking Workers
Healthcare Protection Act would require employers to continue
providing health insurance to workers who are exercising their
right to strike, so working families aren’t forced off the health coverage
they’ve earned and aren’t forced to pay out-of-pocket for potentially
lifesaving health care.
“U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) wants to protect the health care
of workers who go on strike,” wrote Lucas Bechtol for The Bryan
Times. “This sort of thing happens all the time, Brown said, with a bakers
union forced off their health insurance earlier this year while John Deere
threatened to cancel health insurance during a UAW strike last year. These kind
of instances are why he sponsored the Striking Workers Healthcare Protection
Act.”
As the pandemic has illustrated, health insurance can be the
difference between life and death, prosperity or financial ruin. As more
workers go on strike across the country, more companies are using this harmful
tactic to try to break worker strikes. Here are a few examples:
- GM dropped workers’ health insurance, including the
coverage of workers in Ohio like Paulson, during a 2019 national strike.
- Earlier this year, members of Bakery, Confectionery,
Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union (BCTGM) Local 37
went without health care benefits while on strike from their jobs at Rich
Products at the Jon Donaire Desserts plant in Santa Fe Springs,
California.
- During the United Auto Workers strike last fall, John
Deere threatened to cancel the health care coverage of thousands of
striking employees across the Midwest before deciding to continue that
coverage until a final contract was reached with UAW workers.
- Warrior Met strikers represented by the United Mine
Workers of America (UMWA) had their health care coverage cut off when they
went on strike in April 2021 and the union paid for health care coverage for those members since the strike began.
Brown’s legislation has the support of the American Federation of
Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), International Union,
United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America
(UAW), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Bakery, Confectionery,
Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers (BCTGM), Service Employees International
Union (SEIU), Communications Workers of America (CWA), United Mine Workers of
America (UMWA), International Association of Iron Workers (IW), United
Steelworkers (USW), and the Teamsters.
Read the Bryan Times’ full article HERE or an
excerpt below.
Bill to support
striking workers
By: Lucas
Bechtol
March 16, 2022
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) wants to protect the health care of
workers who go on strike.
The Striking Workers Healthcare Protection Act would prevent an
employer from cutting off health care to striking union workers.
Brown, during a conference call with reporters Wednesday
afternoon, relayed the story of meeting with Bryan Paulson, a member of the
United Auto Workers 14 in Toledo during a strike in 2019.
“GM workers had been forced to strike after the company had
refused to negotiate a fair contract that reflected the value of their work,”
Brown said. “Mr. Paulson was there with his then-4-year-old daughter Chesney,
who had a doctor’s appointment scheduled the following week that they had to
cancel because GM canceled their health insurance.”
[…]
Click here to read
the full article.
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