Nearly 10,000 Las Vegas casino workers say they are considering going on strike over what the unpopular Obamacare program has done to their health care insurance.
If contract negotiations to keep their existing benefits go unsettled by March 20, Nevada’s biggest union, the Culinary Union Local 226, says it will vote to grant the union the right to strike.
“The biggest hurdle to reaching settlements in Vegas is the new costs imposed on our health plan by Obamacare,” Unite Here President Donald Taylor told Buzzfeed. “Even though the president and Congress promised we could keep our health plan, the reality is, unless the law is fixed, that won’t be true.”
The threat of an almost 10,000-person union strike is merely the latest example of unions’ rebuke of Obamacare. Last September, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) President Terry O’Sullivan told AFL-CIO convention attendees, “We’ll be damned if we’re going to lose our health insurance because of unintended consequences in the law!”
Further irritating the relationship between unions and President Barack Obama was a ruling earlier this week by the Obama administration to deny unions’ request for an exemption on Obamacare’s transitional reinsurance program. As the Washington Post notes, “It marks the second recent Obamacare defeat for unions. Over the summer, the administration rejected unions’ pleas to allow their health plans to access federal subsidies.”
Recent Obamacare clashes between unions and Obama could further threaten the odds of Democrats already facing daunting midterm elections come November. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, just 38% of Americans now support Obamacare.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.