Never let a good crisis go to waste has been the Left’s playbook since the Obama years. Now, as thousands of union members strike against General Motors, Democrats are seizing on the crisis to push “Medicare for all.” Unsurprisingly, they’re doing so by falsely insisting thousands of striking workers are without healthcare coverage, cut off by an evil and greedy corporation.
The United Auto Workers union, one of the nation’s most powerful unions, called a nationwide strike last week after negotiations with GM collapsed. Now roughly 50,000 workers are on strike. The following day, in accordance with the contract terms agreed upon by UAW leadership, GM revealed that it would cease healthcare coverage for striking workers.
As a result, Bernie Sanders railed against GM and pushed for government-run healthcare, asserting that GM’s decision was driven by “outrageous greed.”
Because of GM’s outrageous greed, 49,000 workers went on strike. So GM cut off their health benefits.
This is why we need Medicare for All—so no one will ever lose coverage.
Medicare for All means freedom, including freedom to strike. https://t.co/HjO2leJE61
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 18, 2019
Never one to miss the spotlight, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also took the chance to vilify GM. “This is straight barbarism.”
This is straight barbarism.
GM workers are asking for a raise during a time of record profits. In response, GM execs cut off their health insurance.
Yet another reason we insist on #MedicareforAll: so your healthcare won’t be held hostage to negotiate lower wages. https://t.co/iKGqZ0igv5
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 18, 2019
In addition to Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, at least five Democratic presidential candidates have visited picket lines to express their support for the union’s strike while criticizing GM for ending benefits. This includes candidates Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke, who both endorse “Medicare for all.”
In reality though, none of the 50,000 workers really lost healthcare coverage while they strike.
During a strike, workers’ healthcare benefits simply shift to being covered under the union’s strike fund rather than GM footing the bill. This is precisely the reason workers pay union dues in the first place. Unions would be at a fairly large disadvantage in negotiations with management if their members all lost healthcare coverage the moment they call a strike.
In fact, UAW leadership has spent the summer educating its members on this exact point in preparation for a strike. An FAQ section on UAW’s website even details the benefits workers are provided from the union’s strike fund, including medical coverage and prescription drugs.
For workers enrolled in COBRA coverage, benefits are even made retroactive to the beginning of the strike. GM’s decision to stop funding the healthcare of striking workers shouldn’t come as a shock, it’s standard operating procedure.
Prior to calling for a strike, UAW union leadership rejected GM’s publicly disclosed proposal which left workers’ low healthcare premiums untouched at 3% – a walk-back of the company’s earlier attempt to raise premiums to 15%. This move was widely reported as a cave-in from the auto manufacturer. The proposal also offered the union $7 billion in new investment at existing plants, would spare the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant from closure, and create 5,400 more jobs. Workers would receive annual wage increases over the next four years, an $8,000 signing bonus per worker, and an increased profit-sharing formula.
Despite autoworkers maintaining medical benefits throughout the strike and refusing a proposal that at the least should have kept negotiations active, Democrats continue spreading the lie that union members are being stripped of their healthcare because of GM. This is a deliberate misrepresentation of reality with the expressed goal to influence public support for Medicare for All.
All considered, UAW members have a fairly generous arrangement for employees refusing to work. Individuals working non-union jobs in the private sector would be shocked to receive healthcare benefits from their employer while declining to show up for work. It also shouldn’t be lost on the public that the average hourly employee at GM earns roughly $90,000 per year.
We aren’t exactly dealing with the striking coal miners of 1930s Kentucky.
Of course, the widespread condemnation of GM glosses over certain facts inconvenient to the Democrat narrative — small details like ten top UAW officials, including leaders still sitting in contract negotiations, being indicted in a bribery and kickback scandal. They also neglect to mention local newspapers calling on the union’s president (also under federal investigation) to resign while citing the likelihood that union leadership was forced into a strike because their members lack trust in their own side’s negotiators and “won’t ratify any contract this team brings to them.”
The great irony here is that “Medicare for all” would actually take away the very employer-based health insurance plans that UAW members are striking to improve. Any gains achieved by the autoworkers to their medical benefits would be forfeited under “Medicare for all,” which would abolish private health coverage.
But why let truth get in the way? Democrats have a crisis on their hands. They can’t let it go to waste.
Mike Palicz is Federal Affairs Manager at Americans for Tax Reform.
