The nation’s biggest labor unions are bringing their muscle to bear to the raucous health-care debates that have erupted over the last week in Congressional town hall meetings across the country.
John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, sent out a call to arms Thursday for rank-and-file members to counteract what he called the “right-wing ‘Tea Party Patriots’ †who have been disrupting the meetings.
And the Service Employees International Union, the nation’s largest union of health-care employees, is deploying its members to the meetings to “reclaim our democracy,†according to a statement. Referring to the colorful T-shirts that the union’s members wear at rallies, a spokeswoman said the union was “unleashing the purple people.â€
Organized labor’s engagement in the mounting clashes is the latest sign of the ferocity of the fight over the direction of any health-care overhaul. It is also the latest sign of how the debate is swelling toward the levels of a national political campaign.
Generally, the unions have supported President Obama’s desire to change the health-care system, even if they differ on some of the particulars. But it remains to be seen whether the unions will fully back the president’s final position. For now, they seem eager to fight on his behalf against the insurance companies and to try to staunch any sense that he is losing the war for public support.
“The question for us is, will we let them make health care ‘Obama’s Waterloo’ or will we make it the next big step in our march to turn around America?†Mr. Sweeney wrote in a memo, first reported by the Huffington Post.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/unions-joining-the-fray-in-health-care-overhaul/?partner=rss&emc=rss
