French and US workers can learn from each other

by Phil E. Benjamin

This article was reprinted from the January 20, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

There is a race afoot for the heart and soul of the U.S. Labor Movement. The militancy of the new AFL-CIO leadership has drawn the attention of Wall Street, anti-labor politicians and right-wing ideologues. They are not quite sure how to handle it but they know that the people's movements to save pensions and health security in France were lead by the labor movement.

They've put their anti-labor think tanks to working overtime trying to figure out how to lure U.S. unions away from a militant path in order to make billions of dollars. One strategy? For-profit health insurance schemes.

The massive labor organizing of the 1930s, followed by the historic victory over fascism in World War II, prepared the way for national health care in 1946-47. Crucial to a successful counter attack by Wall Street was the infamous McCarthy period that, among other things, tied organized labor to the success of U.S. capitalism.

It was during this time that Walter Reuther pulled the labor movement out of the fight for national health care by accepting the offer of the auto industry to negotiate a health care plan for auto workers. This cemented the tie between the future of health care rights for unionized workers and divided them from unorganized workers and others who had to rely on the federal government for their health care rights.

Once Corporate America did not have the Auto Workers, Steel Workers and other unions to contend with, they knew that national health security was dead in Congress. That is a powerful history lesson.

Fifty years later we face a similar cross roads: 1) Increase the struggle for national health care, removing health care from employers and making it a right covering all workers regardless of their employment status; or, 2) Cast the future of organized labor with the for-profit managed care insurance companies and the medical-industrial complex. And there's no middle ground.

The corporate assault on the living standards of working has reached epic proportions. New York City illustrates this massive contradiction. While the number of millionaires grows, 40 percent of 8 million NYC residents lack any kind of health care insurance or are on Medicaid. Between 1994 and 1995, the increase in the uninsured has gone from 19 to 21.5 percent in New York City, and from 13 to 16 percent in the state. In many cases, the pressure on unions in recent years has eroded health care coverage down to levels that threaten people's very lives.

The example of France is illustrative. The French insurance companies -- probably even U.S. insurance companies -- wait in the wings for the Cherac government to cut back on government health care rights, waiting for the chance to dip into the profits that can be made from selling health care to workers and their unions.

But French workers can learn from U.S. workers on this one: a system of employer-based, collectively-bargained health care has, in broad measure, failed even the workers covered by such agreements who are forced to pay more or fewer benefits.