WEST VIRGINIA LESSONS FOR LABOR AND THE FIGHT FOR MEDICAL INSURANCE
We have been looking all over to find out what happened to the healthcare insurance cost issue for the public workers of West Virginia, only to find it had been dropped for the next sixteen months. In a big way the fight in every contract revolves around who will pick up how much and in what way, as regards health insurance and health insurance pension contributions. In public worker contracts all across the country bosses, politicians, Human Resources and the lobbyists for the medical industry unite to ensure profits flow to the medical, insurance and pharmaceutical industry at ever increasing contribution rates from the employees. In other words the employer passes on the cost of an entire industry’s requirement to secure profit for the shareholders on to the backs of the workers-the employees, their captive consumers.
While we celebrate the power displayed and resurgence of labor in the historic land of the Mine Wars of the last century, we have to keep our eye on the entire contract package. This strike has a historic significance, coming at the moment when the entire labor movement is holding its breath, waiting for a Supreme Court decision in the Janus vs. AFSCME case, which threatens us all while the leaderships peddle the Democrats’ anti-Trump “resistance” instead of actually effective militant mobilizations and mass job actions.
Just at the height of a solid 8 day strike in W. Va., with labor putting the bosses against the ropes, with conviction, unity and solidarity, following the #metoo #NoNRA #neveragain moment and just days away from International Working Women’s Day, while the teachers displayed the power of working class-struggle and solidarity, labor blinked and dropped healthcare for a long overdue and ultimately insufficient 5%.
The Senate was in for 4% and the Governor and assembly said 5% so they played that ‘awe shucks’ ‘monies tight’ soft shoe con game on labor. “You know,” they said, if not directly but it was loud and clear, “we will get you the 5% but no promises on healthcare.” For the capitalist class and their enforcers in the state house this 5% was the price they were willing to pay to put a rising red and purple tide back in their civvies.
Because the power of the statewide inter-union strike, in a “right-to-work” state, sent a message far and wide that the class struggle in the supposed Trumpian American heartland is not the anachronism the ruling class talking heads want you to believe it is. Healthcare is what is taking an ever-increasing bite out of the workers’ check and the Governors and their negotiators and benefactors across 50 states and thousands of municipalities and private industries will come up with every possible scheme to grab a piece of your check in order to pay off the stockholders of these industries. California under the “progressive” Democrat Jerry Brown has done this to the State Workers here in the 2015-2018 contracts and intends to deepen the bite in the upcoming contract talks.
We need to learn from West Virginia as we go into these negotiations that when they tell you your strike is illegal they forget that laws are mutable and that a solid strike negates those laws and wins amnesty! But we also need to clearly explain to our fellow workers what we give away when we allow vesting time to be increased and when we allow for a % of our wages to be taken to fund pension medical insurance which was historically funded by the employer. When we allow increase vesting time we kill worker solidarity between new hires and old timers. How can old timers ask the new workers for solidarity when we gave away their future for our own? And we have seen the California public workers unions do this in contract after contract chipping away at united benefit packages and solidarity. This is a crime the union leaderships happily sell in negotiations because they can wave a cash % at the membership and claim victory-as long as the class is asleep. But watch out when we wake up! Likewise we must beware of signing bonuses accepted in exchange for a lower wage increase %. Or the right to cash in accumulated time in lieu of needed wage increases. These tricks stagnate the capacity of your wages to grow in relation to inflation over time. These tricks make it impossible for long term workers to ever make up from the furloughs of 2009-2010 or to gain wage increases which compensate for the actual increases in prices.
The West Virginia state politicians have also threatened to make other cuts to necessary social services such as Medicaid and other budget cuts to pay for the state workers wage increases. A fighting labor leadership would have resolutely stood against this “rob Peter to pay Paul” scheme imposed by the bourgeois politicians and advocated continuing and extending the strike to make it a fight for the entire class. We say open the books of the capitalist class, their industries, holdings and all contractual relations. A fighting labor leadership would look at the books and advocate workers ownership and self-management instead of foisting another “tax the rich” scam on the membership; such scams always leave the apportioning of the spending of the ‘extra’ money collected to the same servants of the rich who are cutting your services now! They do so as a matter of ideology; profit is their “right”, while they deny you have any right to “entitlements” like your health, Social Security and adequate unemployment insurance. Tax the rich schemes promote graft by the connected private enterprises and simply shift the bourgeois’ money clip from one pocket to the other.
To win in the next round of contracts we need to pick up where West Virginia left off. We need to adopt class struggle methods to organize all worker organizations in any given industry or working for any target employer to take solid broad-based strikes. We need strike committees with a democratically elected, accountable and recallable leadership, that will replace the labor-faking union bureaucrats who will not fight. A class struggle leadership that understands that there is no common interest between Labor and Capital and that will treat the strike as the class war it is.
We need to advance demands that address the broader needs of the working class and oppressed peoples not just to gain their solidarity and because it is the moral thing to do, but because when we broaden the social basis of our struggle the entire class rises in consciousness and potential. To that end we need to incorporate the fight for Jobs for All at a living wage into every strike. Hence the demand: 30 hours work for 40 hours pay to compensate labor for increases in productivity and to share the work. We need to demand socialized medical care under workers control as a right in every campaign. Democrats will pettifog where they don’t overtly fight you. We need a fighting workers/labor party, beholden to no one but us and the oppressed!
Working class academics and experts can, have and must expose the taxpayer-to-stockholder pipeline that lobbyists secure by greasing every politician’s political campaign. To win, every fight must raise demands which answer the needs of the entire class. As the class takes action we must advance women’s rights and concerns, defense of immigrant workers and families, freedom from state repression and surveillance, self defense from the police violence and harm committed by rampaging right wingers and out of control gun/violence freaks. In this way the entire class rises in solidarity and consciousness and instinctively asks how we can win? To really win we need to break with the capitalist politicians of the Democrats and Republicans and run our own worker candidates chosen from among the leaders of the rank and file movements- representatives of the workers who must answer directly to workers’ assemblies and to the fighting program for a workers government. Otherwise watch you wallet ‘cause everytime they give you a dollar they take away a buck and a quarter.’
Because there was no working class offensive against the failures of the Affordable Care Act the Trumpsters are defunding it administratively and abolished the legal requirement to have health insurance. This is how they “solve” the problem of premium cost to the individual! Labor must offer a social solution! Socialized medical care for all Now!
From West Virginia to California and Beyond
The bosses and their representatives tell you that a public workers strike is illegal. Well we have two words for them! West Virginia. During the last State of California contract negotiations the Blanning and Baker LLC, a private for-profit firm that runs PECG (state engineers BU9) and CAPS (State scientists BU10) warned over and over that we cannot strike because it is illegal. This is the proof that these dues thieves are really representatives of the Governor, not the workers whose “unions” they control. It is no surprise that Blanning and Baker LLC is also the executive director for the Young Democrats of California. That is not a high school club but the organization that the politicians use to promote their up-and-coming representatives serving the governor’s anti-labor initiatives. The Blanning & Baker pawn David Miller who spent 20 years as their yes man on the CAPS executive board has been propelled by the Democrats into the Presidency of the 1.8 million members’ CALPERS $334 billion pension fund! Blanning and Baker administered PECG and CAPS made the first concession, the opening wedge that was acquiesced to as a fait accompli by members who thought they couldn’t strike. Then the state sought a bigger percentage giveback from the SEIU workers, who are paid less, to get the same pile of dollars from them! Now Miller gets rewarded by the ruling elite for your losses!
Public workers in California contracts start to expire in July, 2018. To make up the loss California public workers took last time — yes we lost because: workers pay now into medical insurance for retirement and new workers need 25 years to vest, and CAPS scientists are still paid 20% less than engineers beside them doing the same work, and the SEIU workers’ last contract enforced a large 4% contribution to retirement medical insurance, supposedly and cynically offset by a small one time signing bonus– we need to prepare inter-union action and follow the example of West Virginia with a solid state-wide strike!
As we approach the end of Cal State workers’ contracts the defeats of 2015 become evident as we take our checks to supermarket for food, housing and health care. It was hidden by PECGs, CAPs, SEIU 1000 and the other leaderships that the raises in the last contract were undercut by a combination of giveback contributions to medical insurance in retirement and increasing medical insurance premiums. Your signing bonus did not add to your base pay but it did add to your tax bill! You get an annual raise. Then the medical insurance and pension giveback on top of inflation wipe it away. There is no way the current leaderships of the unions are going to fight for you when this contract comes due. To win we must organize rank and file action committees at every job site. We must start the undercurrent of discussion now so when the hacks running the unions come around and tell us that to win we must support the same politicians who robbed us in the last contract, we have an alternative to subordinating ourselves to the interests of the capitalist politicians–we must offer class struggle united action and political independence in the form of a fighting workers/Labor Party.
– 03/11/2017
