Worker Power Update: Protecting the Right to Strike

Protecting the Right to Strike

This week, Democratic Pennsylvania Congressman Chris Deluzio and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown introduced CWA-endorsed legislation that would penalize employers who terminate or change access to healthcare benefits for workers during a strike. The legislation, called the Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection Act, would make it an unfair labor practice for employers to cut off or alter the health care insurance of workers involved in a strike or a lock out. Employers violating the law would be subject to monetary penalties.

“Protecting the right to strike means protecting workers from unfair strike-breaking tactics. No company should be able to hold a worker’s health—or the well-being of their family—hostage during a labor dispute,” said Deluzio in an exclusive article in the Pittsburgh Union Progress, which is published by striking CWA members at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This legislation would put an end to the abuse of power by companies like Block Communications, the owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who made unilateral changes to the healthcare of workers involved in the printing, mailing, and distribution of the paper, and subsequently terminated striking journalists’ healthcare altogether.

Read the rest of this week's national Worker Power Update.