CWA Launches Campaign for Quality Health Care for All

CWA is launching a union wide campaign to spotlight the health care crisis and its devastating effects on working families.  CWA's campaign will be built on an electoral, legislative and mobilization strategy that will engage CWA members in an all out effort to convince elected officials and political candidates to champion comprehensive health care reform. 

The keystone of CWA's campaign is the Stewards Army of members and retirees who will mobilize, along with other unions and allied organizations, to press for comprehensive reform.  A network of coordinators is being recruited to help train CWA members and retirees to become health care activists. In the months leading up to the 2008 elections, activists will be asked to meet with key members of Congress, communicate the urgent need for serious health care reform that meets CWA's principles, and hold them accountable for enacting legislation to achieve comprehensive reform by the year 2012. 

Another important element is CWA's health care website, www.healthcarevoices.org.  On the site, CWA members can post personal accounts of their experiences with the health care system and why they think health care reform is so important. These stories will be used in the meetings with congressional representatives and candidates to demonstrate the widespread demand for meaningful reform. 

The website also serves as a resource center on health care, with up to date information on CWA's health care campaign as well as on political, legislative and policy developments, access to reports and studies and links to useful sites. 

CWA's campaign goes hand-in-hand with the AFL-CIO's drive to secure health care for all in America, which it will launch at events over the Labor Day weekend. "In America, no one should go without health care," is the AFL-CIO's message. More information on the AFL-CIO campaign is available at http://www.aflcio.org/issues/healthcare/.

"The health care crisis goes well beyond the 47 million Americans who lack health care coverage," said CWA Vice President Annie Hill, head of the Executive Board Committee on Health Care. "It's about working families, including CWA members, who have suffered attacks on their benefits from their employers.  And it is about union employers that face a competitive disadvantage from companies that refuse to provide quality health care. This is not the way the health care system should operate in America.  We can do better than this."