Labor Campaign for Single-payer
Healthcare Is A Right—Not A Privilege
 
Media Advisory
January 8, 2009
Contact: Mark Dudzic, 201-314-2653
 
Hundreds to Convene in St. Louis Saturday to Press for Single-Payer Healthcare Reform
 
Labor, activists from across U.S. kick-off coordinated grassroots campaign
 
St. Louis – Some 150 union leaders, joined by nurses, physicians, healthcare reform, and community activists from coast to coast will gather in St. Louis this weekend to step up the grassroots campaign to enact comprehensive national healthcare reform.  The group is promoting a single-payer plan, like Medicare, improved and expanded to cover everyone.
 
The national kick-off meeting is convened by Labor for Single-Payer Healthcare, a campaign spearheaded by scores of trade union organizations.  The national single-payer bill, HR 676 – expected to be reintroduced in Congress later this month – has been endorsed by 39 state AFL-CIO federations, 100 Central Labor Councils, and more than 400 local unions. The bill has 92 co-sponsors in Congress, more than any other health care reform bill.
 
When:  January 10-11, 2009
Where: Crowne Plaza, 200 North 4th St., St. Louis
 
(Note: news media are welcome to attend the opening session, from 8:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. on Saturday, January 10, and conference attendees are available for interviews throughout the weekend by calling 201-314-2653)
 
Speakers at the conference are expected to include Missouri AFL-CIO President Hugh McVay, St. Louis Central Labor Council President Bob Soutier, and California School Employees Association Past President Clyde Rivers.
 
"President-elect Obama has invited Americans to join a national dialogue on how to solve our national healthcare crisis. Labor and grassroots activists around the country are responding with a clear and emphatic message – a single-payer plan such as HR 676 is the only way to protect American families from skyrocketing medical costs and the disgraceful denials of care so common in the current system," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.
 
"In virtually every contract negotiation, employers are seeking to shift the cost of healthcare to workers, resulting in contentious bargaining and many strikes.  For the vast majority of workers without a union, the situation is even more desperate.  A publicly financed, national healthcare plan similar to our Medicare system that could efficiently cover all Americans is the only solution that will control costs, increase access and improve the quality of care," said Jeff Crosby, president of the North Shore Labor Council, AFL-CIO and one of the campaign organizers.
 
"Our campaign will promote grassroots labor support for a ‘Medicare for All’ national solution to the healthcare crisis.  We will educate and mobilize broad membership support for healthcare reforms that would take basic healthcare benefits ‘off the table’ and allow our unions to focus on pay, working conditions, and other important benefits in collective bargaining," said Nancy Wohlforth, a vice president of the California Federation of Labor and a leader of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU).