Health Care

Today, Jobs with Justice and the United Students against Sweatshops released an "investor alert" showing how Rite Aid's mismanagement and corporate greed have contributed to the company's poor performance during the past four years.  The release of the investor alert coincides with Rite Aid's annual shareholders' meeting on June 23 at the Hilton Hotel in Harrisburg, PA. The alert is available on the Jobs with Justice website here.

Jobs with Justice has been an active supporter of Rite Aid workers across the country who have struggled to form unions and to win union contracts.  Over the last several years, Jobs with Justice has leafleted stores, met with store managers, sent emails to top Rite Aid executives, and held rallies in support Rite Aid workers in their local communities.

The Vermont Worker's Center invites you to tune into a special presentation on Vermont's new universal health care law, to be signed by Governor Shumlin on May 26 at 10am. As a direct result of a highly energized and organized grassroots people's movement for the human right to healthcare, Vermont has become the first state in the country to pass a bill for a universal, publicly financed healthcare system that commits to providing healthcare as a public good.

Join the Vermont Workers Center/JwJ at the Vermont Statehouse Room 11 at 9:00AM E.S.T. Thursday, May 26, 2011 or tune into the live stream here.

Immediately before the bill signing ceremony in the Vermont Statehouse, the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign will give a presentation to the press and the public, live-streamed online to a national audience, to explain the significance of this new law and provide a human rights assessment of its key provisions. Leading members of the Campaign will also look ahead at the challenges Vermonters face as powerful special interests, led by the deep-pocketed insurance industry, gear up to derail the transition to universal healthcare over the next few years.

Rite Aid Negotiating Committee after signing Tentative Agreement on May 1, 2011.Rite Aid workers at the company's massive Southwest Distribution Center in Lancaster declared victory on Sunday, May 1 in their five-year effort to form a union and improve working conditions.

Workers signed a 3-year tentative agreement with management on May 1 – subject to a May 12 ratification vote – that will improve conditions at the million-square-foot facility in California's high desert by guaranteeing:

Cross-posted from In These Times.

Last Friday, more than two dozen Rite Aid drugstores across the country had some unexpected visitors. Activists in 10 states converged on 30 stores on April 1 to protest the company's unfair labor practices and management's efforts to impose unaffordable healthcare costs on employees.

Workers at six Cleveland Rite Aid stores—whose employees are members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 880—have been on strike since March 14. After nearly a year of fruitless contract negotiations, the strike started because Rite Aid management committed dozens of unfair labor practices, violating members' rights through illegal threats, harassment, retaliation, surveillance and refusing to bargain in good faith.

On Thursday, March 24, members of the grassroots Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign cheered on as the Vermont House of Representatives voted 92 - 49 to pass the universal healthcare bill, H.202.  The House bill passed as a result of thousands of Vermonters speaking out and demanding that healthcare be treated as a human right and provided as a public good.

“This bill puts Vermont on a path to a system in which every Vermonter can get the healthcare they need when they need it, and the financing of that system is shared equitably by all. This is a huge step forward,” says Peg Franzen, President of the Vermont Workers’ Center.

The Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign still hopes to strengthen the bill in the Senate based on its human rights principles of universality, equity, accountability, transparency and participation.

“This bill is a road map and it gets Vermont started down that road. We are fighting hard to have human rights principles be the guidelines for this bill, because we must have a system that works for everyone,” says Franzen. “We’re asking the Senate to specify that Green Mountain Care will be financed equitably, which means that people and businesses should contribute based on their ability to pay. We’re also demanding that the new system gets rid of the middlemen - private insurance companies - which are in the business of making money on our backs and denying us access to care.”

Portland Jobs with Justice has led the building of a statewide network to strengthen the movement for a single payer health care system.  With the addition of all the Oregon Jobs with Justice chapters (Southern OR, Central OR, Eugene Springfield Solidarity Network, and Mid-Willamette Valley) adopting single payer health care as a priority campaign, Oregon JwJ activist are gearing up to fight for a just healthcare system that puts people before profits.

Single Payer Conference a Huge Success

On January 29, over 450 single payer advocates from around the state of Oregon gathered at the First Unitarian Church in Portland to network and advocate for an improved, expanded Medicare for All program to fix our broken health care system.

Photo by Wilson E. Allen

More than 400 Hoosiers rallied Tuesday, March 8, led by Planned Parenthood and supported by the Central Indiana Jobs with Justice coalition of  faith and labor partners, in response to several laws under consideration in the state legislature that attack community-based health care for women. Labor and faith leaders joined women's rights activists in calling on Hoosiers across the state to continue their courageous effort to defend the Hoosier majority from the anti-worker, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-student legislative attack.