The Patriot Post® · Unions Wake Up to ObamaCare

Barack Obama and his ilk fought tooth and nail to win over enough votes to secure ObamaCare’s passage. After being sweet-talked with the usual payoffs that unions expect, Big Labor was happy to oblige as a primary catalyst for the Unaffordable Care Act. But the problem with unrealistic promises is that eventually reality catches up, leaving unions with a case of buyer’s remorse.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is one example. Citing “policy positions on such important matters as immigration, labor law reform, health care reform, and international labor issues,” ILWU president Robert McEllrath announced that the group’s 40,000 members will be withdrawing their membership from AFL-CIO, the country’s biggest federation of unions. “We feel the Federation has done a great disservice to the labor movement and all working people by going along to get along,” McEllrath explained. Now they say so… The real story here is that ILWU wants a single-payer health care system. Leave it to a union to see a solution in replacing a bad system with something worse. But that’s just the point: Completely nationalizing health care is the Democrats’ true end-game.

AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka was also forced to concede that ObamaCare’s got problems. “[E]mployers are trying to plan their future by creating a workforce that gets 29 and a half hours or less a week so that they don’t have to pay health care,” Trumka recently admitted. Additionally, union leaders have expressed various concerns over the cost of ObamaCare plans. No wonder the White House is working on a “fix” that addresses Big Labor’s concerns.