Health Care SIF Takes Reform Message to Labor 2008

CWA's Health Care and Employee Free Choice campaign is moving into a new stage, with activists and participants transitioning their energy and efforts to Labor 2008.

The campaign, a project of the Strategic Industries Fund, has had terrific success over the last six months, with 110 coordinators in more than 100 congressional districts in 41 states. Seventeen of them are presidential battleground states.

Valerie Downing, a member of Local 3403 and CD coordinator for CWA's Health Care for All Campaign, works on CWA's get-out-the-vote and voter education effort.

More than 12,000 CWA leaders and members have attended campaign workshops and presentations to discuss issues and learn the skills they need to take the message back to coworkers.

About 15,000 have signed two postcards calling on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and real health care reform.

CWA Executive Vice President Annie Hill said CWA will continue to provide information to members — through meetings, mailings, workshops and other means — that reinforces the need for action around health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.

"Right now, we all need to be focused on the November elections. We need to elect a president and senators who put workers and their needs first," Hill said.

The work of the campaign already has shifted from workshops to the November elections, mobilizing everyone who was trained to leaflet workplaces about CWA-endorsed candidates, walk door to door and volunteer for phone banks.

Diana Butsch, Local 1168, is CWA's coordinator for New York's 26th and 29th congressional districts. The health care and Employee Free Choice training in western New York covered both health care members from the Kaleida hospital network and other facilities as well as Verizon members.

"Our health care members are living this issue every day" Butsch said. "They see that the system is broken, that patients don't get the care they need, that budget and financial decisions dictate patient care. We channel their passion and energy into working for candidates who will do something positive for working people."

Matt Yeargin, vice president of CWA Local 2205 and Virginia state health care coordinator, said the training helped people fully realize the state of health care today in the United States.

"Initially, maybe one in 25 participants knew that there was a big problem with our health care system," he said. "At the end of the day, 100 percent saw the problem and were ready to do something about it."

Now, many more people are receptive to a "Medicare for all" type of program, seeing it as a plausible fix for the country's health care problems. That wouldn't have been the case a few months ago, Yeargin said.

Coordinators and activists are transitioning to Labor 2008, while continuing to sign members up in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

"We're working tightly with the Steel Workers and have lots of voter registration drives, door knocking and phone banking planned," he said. "The biggest job we're facing now is to dispel rumors that are being spread and exposing the candidates for what they are, especially on the issues that are important to our members."