Unionists rally against tax on health benefits

“We don’t need any more taxes on the working class. It’s just unfair,” declared Jim Huber, 59, a 42-year Steelworker – and his union local’s benefits manager – at the longtime Bethlehem Steel mill and its successor plants at Baltimore’s Sparrows Point.

Huber’s comments and those of other speakers focused on one of the two worst sections of the Senate health bill: A plan to tax workers’ health benefits worth more than $8,500 for an individual and $23,000 for a family. Unionists vehemently oppose that, arguing they have traded away raises and pensions over the years to preserve health care – care which is far from the “Cadillac plans” its foes criticize.

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Huber was joined by Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and other workers at a Capitol Hill rally organized by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt. Sanders originally planned to again push his plan to trash present dysfunctional expensive private-insurer-run health care in favor of a federal-run single-payer health care system. Single-payer rallies also were held Thursday near dozens of senators’ field offices in cities nationwide.

But the Senate killed single-payer weeks ago, and Senate negotiators dumped its weaker substitute – a government-run “public option” to compete with the insurers – earlier in the week. So speakers and statements focused on stopping the tax on workers’ benefits, though the public option is also a key cause for labor in health care revision. Sanders has a pending amendment to the health care revision to dump the benefits tax.

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“We need a strong public health insurance option to keep insurance companies honest and fair financing – with employers shouldering their responsibility and no new taxes on health benefits,” AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka said Wednesday.

"Instead of taxing those who already provide benefits, those employers who don\’t pay, should pay," Cohen added at the Capitol Hill rally.

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That includes Wal-Mart, according to CWA, UFCW, the Teamsters, the Steelworkers, the Farm Workers and UAW. In a full-page newspaper ad, they declared the world’s largest private employer – notorious for its low wages, rabid anti-unionism and high-cost health care – would be virtually unaffected by the Senate’s health care revision. “The Senate wants to make the Wal-Mart model into law,” their ad stated.

The tax on workers\’ health insurance will hit 30 million families in the first five years of the plan, Cohen said. He also cited a new poll commissioned by CWA that finds 70% of voters surveyed strongly oppose taxing health benefits.

The Teamsters, who also support Sanders’ move to kill the tax on workers’ health insurance, noted it would be a 40% tax on any insurance over the minimums.

“Millions of working Americans will pay thousands of dollars more in taxes under the Senate’s proposal to finance health reform,” said Teamsters President James Hoffa. “Millions more will have their health benefits cut, even if they don’t belong to a union.”

Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Al Franken, D-Minn., are Sanders’ allies on the amendment.

Hoffa cited a Mercer Consulting survey showing two-thirds of firms would cut benefits instead of paying the tax, and another 23% would load it onto their workers.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

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