Sanders and Medicare for All Could Improve Workers’ Power

Faye Guenther and Sue Wilmot

It is not surprising that a majority of democratic primary voters have identified Health Care as their top issue in the upcoming election. One of the most significant drivers of working people’s economic trouble is health care costs and related stress. This is central to why UFCW 21, the state’s largest private sector union, has endorsed both Medicare for All as well as Senator Bernie Sanders for President.

There are four key reasons why a large union, with many members who have negotiated strong health care plans for themselves, supports Medicare for All.

One: Employers try to get rid of our union-negotiated health plans or increase the costs nearly every time we go into contract negotiations. A few years back, 30,000 Puget Sound-area union grocery store workers nearly went on strike to prevent their employers from cutting health plans for workers and their families. While this was an immense show of worker power and community support, grocery store workers were fighting to keep what we had, not make the proactive improvements we needed. This dynamic is all too common, where health care coverage is a major obstacle during bargaining. Medicare for All would remove that challenge, and we as workers could focus our negotiations on other essential topics, like wages and working conditions.

Two: Linking a worker’s health care to their job, as is often the case for union workers with health care, makes us too dependent on our employer and limits our freedom to move from one job to another. Even now, when there is very low unemployment, worries about losing health care coverage can cause us to stay at one job instead of moving to another that would be better for our career, pay higher wages, or work better with our family’s schedule. Medicare for All would solve that problem.

Three: If all workers had access to quality, affordable health care coverage, independent of their employment, it would remove one of the reasons why workers without a union are fearful about trying to organize one in their workplaces. Why? They wouldn’t have to stress about the very real risk of not being able to afford coverage if their employer retaliated against them for their unionizing efforts. A bully employer might try to intimidate you out of building a union at work, but those threats would no longer concern your family’s access to health care coverage. Medicare for All would provide insurance for everyone as a universal right, as is the case in almost every other nation on earth.

Four: By passing Medicare for All, we would see a national shift in the inflation of health care costs. We at UFCW 21 have shown that a smartly run health plan can avoid the runaway cost increases that have become all too common for many working people. The health plan we have negotiated for tens of thousands of our members has avoided large increases in premiums, out-of-pocket costs, deductibles, prescriptions and other health care costs by negotiating with providers on a massive scale and incentivizing workers to be more invested in their own health. For the economy as a whole, when our nation stops spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year to pay for increasing health care costs that make insurers, health care conglomerates, and drug companies rich, we as a nation will be able to spend those resources on health for the many instead of wealth for the few.

We applaud Senator Sanders and our representative Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal for their long-time support of Medicare for All and feel their records show a commitment to doing this policy right for working people in our country.

###

ABOUT UFCW 21

UFCW 21 is working to build a powerful union that fights for economic, political and social justice in our workplaces and our communities. We represent over 46,000 workers in retail, grocery stores, health care, cannabis, and other industries in Washington State.

Faye Guenther is President of UFCW 21. Sue Wilmot is a long-time UFCW 21 member and workplace leader at Safeway.