AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka had hoped to avoid an embarrassing convention outbreak of public criticism of Obamacare. But irate labor leaders, mainly from unions with multi-employer (Taft-Hartley) health plans, insisted on having their say.
Delegates passed a compromise resolution detailing the “fixes” needed in the Affordable Care Act. Without these changes, union-negotiated health coverage will be “regressed to the mean,” as one congressional staffer predicted in a meeting with D Taylor, president of UNITE-HERE.
Two days later at the White House, though, Trumka, Taylor, and other labor officials received an embarrassing post-convention rebuff. The administration still intends to deny union members in multi-employer plans the access to income-based subsidies that will be offered to other lower-income workers through state insurance exchanges.
The same AFL-CIO media operation that was going full-blast for five days in Los Angeles-and for six months before that-suddenly fell silent on Friday. The AFL-CIO had “no comment” on the White House dismissal of labor’s concerns.
