Another damn good reason why single-payer health care is badly needed.

[Freeper]

KansDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Donate to DU!    Thu Aug-18-11 03:09 PM
Original message
Another damn good reason why single-payer health care is badly needed.
   
Juan Gonzalez: Verizon Workers’ Strike "Most Important Labor Battle Going on Today"

Telecom giant Verizon has threatened to suspend benefits to 45,000 striking workers if they do not return to work at the end of the month. The strike was called after negotiations after Verizon sought to cut health and pension benefits and obtain more leeway to fire workers. The strike is "the most important labor battle going on today," says Democracy Now! co-host and New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez. "We’re not talking here about a General Motors or a company that’s in financial trouble. But Verizon is literally swimming in cash. <...> And yet, even with such a profitable company, you have a situation where it is demanding unprecedented givebacks from its workers. If Verizon, such a profitable company, can insist that its workforce has to do all of these cuts in their living standards, what does it mean about any other company in America? <...> The workers are vowing to keep this up as long as possible, because a company that is so profitable right now should not be insisting that its workers give up even more of the hard-fought gains they’ve had over the years."

http://www.democracynow.org /

Those benefits include health care, dental care, and pharmaceuticals.

If we had single payer, then threatening workers with the prospect of suspending their corporate-provided benefits would not be a factor in labor negotiations. Corporations could not use extortion as a means to end strikes.

Interesting that single-payer would diminish the power and control corporatists had over workers.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1765562

Yet you welcome that power a control to be handed over to the govt.

Why should Verizon pay for the benefits of people who aren't showing up at work?

annabanana Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Donate to DU!    Thu Aug-18-11 03:12 PM
Response to Original message
2. Boy Howdy you got THAT right! Using health care as a cudgel in
   
a labor dispute is something that should not be allowed to happen. As long as Americans are dependent on their employers for life and death decisions we will be a Nation of Wage Slaves.

Yeah let's be slaves to the govt instead. 

[zeitgeist]

I say give them the Full Monty..."Smithers, Release the hounds!"

It is quite possible the union apparatchik is about to make a serious tactical mistake on this one.  Verizon?  Land lines?  Strike?  Meh, who cares would be the answer you get from the man on the street.  Now, how many are unemployed who can't find a job, and these bozos are on strike?

[Rugnuts]

Corporations could not use extortion as a means to end strikes.

but unions can??

[Karin]

Look at this dramaqueenery:

LiberalLoner  (1000+ posts)         Thu Aug-18-11 03:30 PM
Response to Original message
6. We will be like the old man and the dog in "Tommyknockers" - having all our life
 sucked from us painfully with nothing given to us in return.

Soon they won't be paying us enough to live - they will be paying us just enough to make our dying a little more slow. And we will take those wages, because...what is the alternative? 

Go into business for yourself. 

[Erasmus]

Uggh....  once again, the laws of economics will end up bitch-slapping liberals if they ever successfully pass a single-payer system.  Competition brings lower prices, profit motive brings innovation and progress.  Government monopolies bring higher prices, shortages, fraud and waste, and will result in a dead halt to new drug and procedure development.  It's simple economic law.

[FlaGator]

We do have a single payer system in America. Drop your health insurance and the only one paying for your health care will be you. Can't get much more single payer than that.