Our New Anahuac

It took me a while to figure out why SEIU (one of the biggest labor unions) and Wal-Mart (the biggest employer) would send a joint letter last week to President Obama in which they offer support for certain key aspects of his health care proposal. The letter says that they both specifically support a so-called employer mandate system, as opposed to a single-payer system, in which the government would provide coverage for everyone and the payment would come from only one single entity (the government).

The most progressive of forces have been in favor of the single payer system. Through such a system, there are no loopholes or exclusions. For better or worse, everyone’s covered in the same way. The government simply covers the largest risk pool, which is in effect the US public. Period. However, the Dems in power, since almost the very beginning, have said that this is a political impossibility.

Apparently, Wal-Mart has taken the position that health care reform is going to pass, and they have decided that they can either waste their influence in totally opposing health care or they can drink the licuado and try to create legislation that is to their competitive advantage, which I think they seem to have figured out a couple of years ago. Many speculate that an employer mandate system WOULD drive up Wal-Mart’s costs, but would drive up their competitors’ costs even more. So, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em and make the best of it for your bottom line. Plus, in the letter they comment on their support for a trigger mechanism, which would allow a cut in government health care spending, in the event, well I guess if it got to expensive for them too quickly. “The letter hints that the signatories do not favor a proposal that would require companies to cover the cost of signing up low-wage workers for Medicaid.” No surprises here. Other business interests spoke loudly against Wal-Mart’s decision.

Many progressives frown on SEIU’s decision to refrain from pursuing single payer. However, most labor enthusiasts have long recognized that today’s unions are a far cry from the Eugene-Debs-inspired, anti-establishment organizations that they were eighty years ago. They tend to take the pragmatic approach that Nathan Newman does:

Maybe it’s because I’ve been in the middle of the largest single payer campaign in America’s history that I am so skeptical of it as a strategy today. I’d vote for any single payer system that came along, but I think putting all of our eggs in eliminating the employer role in health care is dangerous and reckless with the lives of working families who currently depend on the health care funds coming from employers.

That may be a messy political reality that doesn’t fit well with the abstract policy attraction of abandoning an employer-based system, but it seems far more politically within reach to preserve and even expand employer contributions to health care than to pass such a massive increase in taxes. And that will leave scarce public funds for actually expanding coverage rather than just making up for lost non-tax employer contributions.

Even so, many expect more from the union.

My own experience with SEIU has been a positive one. I am proud to say that I know several founders of the Justice for Janitor’s campaign, who came in and invested countless hours with the janitors and busted cola getting it done. SEIU did it when nobody else did, and they succeeded in Houston, home of business, and in a right to work state! (Can I Get A Grito). Their story has never been fully recognized, but it is a story of highly-talented, hard-working organizers working against great odds. Locally, SEIU has been able to attract some of the best and brightest Raza, among them some ex-Mechistas and a danzante or two. The ones who are still there are doing a superb job and some have even given up their freedom in defense of the janitors. I have marched shoulder to shoulder with SEIU, and I would do it again if given the opportunity.

Even so, I don’t think that I am revealing any secrets when I mention that many union activists around the country are particularly critical of Andy Stern, president of SEIU (listen to KPFTand you’ll hear new complaints every couple of months on different shows). Most union organizers hate his approach of getting cozy with corporate management, and some even accuse him of being a lackey for the bosses, definitely fightin’ words in unionese. Some of the most specific criticisms were about Stern being extremely soft on health care issues and letting corporations off the hook with respect to this demand. It seems that with SEIU in a fight with a whole bunch of other labor unions, they are looking for friends in other places than just labor.

I don’t know enough about the internal politics of the unions to comment, but I do believe that it is hard to be as successful as quickly as SEIU without ruffling some feathers. I believe most of the disagreements will end amicably, like the one between SEIU and the California Nurses Association.

This whole healthcare letter thing almost reads like Romeo and Juliet.

Wal-Mart gets screamed at by all of the other business interests because they can’t stand his sancha, SEIU, and what they DO together.

SEIU hears the same stuff from other unions because of her viejo, Big Bad Walton…

sorry couldn’t resist.

My main point in writing all this is that it looks like the country might have had its type of reform decided by these two titans last week. We know the relationship between business and Repubs and labor and Dems. With these two giants giving love a chance, I don’t know if any other forces can muster enough support at the other poles of the healthcare debate to really muscle in their ideas.

For me, the real lesson should be that, in the name of pragmatism, progressives have seemed to just give up way too easily, and to compromise before giving it the good fight. Maybe its a psychological complex left over from eight years of Bush rule or maybe, like La Raza Unida Party taught us, the two parties aren’t too different. Now, Dems have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, control Congress and hold the presidency, and they still tell us that we can’t consider the most progressive of reforms. Single payer was never really given a chance from the get go, and I think some Dems are finally getting it:

A quick note about the phrase ‘real’ or ‘true’ health care reform here as well. Almost all of my videos are strongly in support of The Public Option. That was in deference to your support of it, sir (writing to Obama). It’s a compromise, however, for real health care reform – namely, a single payer, universal health care system like every single other wealthy industrialized country on the face of the earth has.

But progressives have been told over and over that single payer was a pipe dream; a political impossibility. So I fell in line for the more ‘realistic’ public option. Now that we’re seeing the compromise on that compromise, perhaps this was a mistake.

If you aim for the stars, you may hit the moon. If you aim for an employer mandate, you might get nothing. We need to fight until we have exhausted all options. Then we can consider another option. Until then, we shouldn’t budge, but it might just be too late.