Labor Leader: Break Out Of Corporate Box

Fair share health bills require large employers to provide health coverage or else contribute to Medicaid or a program for workers without employer-sponsored health coverage.

“You saw the first crisp punch in that fight when we overrode Governor Ehrlich’s veto of our ‘Fair Share’ health care legislation in Maryland,” Sweeney said.

“We’ve decided to break free from the gridlock of Washington and the hammerlock of national corporate health care lobbyists by launching ‘fair share’ campaigns in more than 30 states,” Sweeney said. “We need a simple national health care plan that covers everybody. The failure of Bush’s complicated Medicare prescription drug benefit demonstrates that. But if they won’t give us a fair health plan covering all families in all 50 states, we will give them hell in all 50 states.”

Sweeney also took on the issue of pension reform and the increasing number of companies abandoning their defined benefit pension programs.

“If I were president, I would expose the 150 major U.S. corporations that are using the bankruptcy courts to abandon their commitments to provide guaranteed pensions to the workers who have enabled them to grow and profit,” Sweeney said.