Unions Challenge Administration On Obamacare At AFL-CIO Convention

The AFL-CIO closed its latest convention this week by challenging President Obama on the Affordable Care Act, pledging bipartisan politics, and promising to make good on opening up the labor movement to non traditonal forms of organizing and outreach while launching campaigns in low density parts of the country that have traditionally been hostile to Labor.
An hour before gaveling the convention to a close, AFL-CIO delegates passed a resolution expressing support for the aims and accomplishments of the Affordable Care Act while adding the Labor Movement’s deep concerns over its implementation. The resolution urges that the Act “should be administered in a manner that preserves the high-quality health coverage multiemployer plans have provided to union families for decades and, if this is not possible, we demand the ACA be amended by Congress.” It calls for more penalties for employers who cut hours to shirk coverage, curtailing some new taxes and fees applied to union health plans, and extension of tax credits to them. The debate on the resolution stood out for the number of General Presidents who personally took the floor to press their case and, more so, for the frank comments directed at the Obama Administration.
One of those General Presidents was SMART’s Joseph Nigro who warned delegates that “four years from now, you won’t be here” if the legislation’s move to keep multi-employer plans out of state exchanges goes unchanged.
At the time of the Affordable Care Act’s passage, President Obama stated that union members could keep their insurance under the law,  but the reality is that the president’s statement to labor in 2009 is simply not  true for millions of workers.
According to the administration’s analysis of the Affordable Care Act, the law  does not provide tax subsidies for the roughly 20 million people covered by Taft-Hartlery multiemployer plans.  This interpretation could force union members to  change their insurance and accept more expensive and perhaps worse coverage in  the state-run exchanges while exposing union employers to a significant cost disadvatage as their non-union competition will be subsidized by the state run exchanges.
You can read more about it in this article from Josh Eidelson here.  You can also read more about the devastating effect of Obamacare on Taft-Hartley plans here.