The Cadillac Plan

Dear Socialist Viewpoint,

Our UTU (United Transportation Union) President, Mike Futhey, along with AFL-CIO President, Don Trumpka were absolutely jubilant that Barak Obama came to address their convention. This after Obama has presided over the busting of the UAW, the transference of working class wealth over to the hands of the bankers and speculators who gambled with mortgages impossible to pay back by their victims. Now Barack is going to tax the union health plans out of existence.

Cadillac Plan? Talk about Orwellian wordspeak. Classifying healthcare plans like a variety of cars ranging from Saturns to Cadillacs. The Democrats and Republicans are wholly united in putting the U.S. working and middle classes into Saturn healthcare plans by denying essential tests and services. Every human being deserves high quality healthcare if they live and breathe on these shores, including undocumented workers. Already the Mayo Clinic has turned people away because Medicare payments won’t cover doctor costs. It’s a taste of the austerity to come. We never had these insane discussions back in the ’70s and ’80s. Everyone in my neighborhood at least went to the damn doctor and were treated when they got sick; simple as that.

This present union bureaucracy is just like the Lodz Judenraat ran by Eldest of the Jews Rumkowski. The climax of the horrors of Lodz Ghetto was Rumkowski’s blackest speech in human history, “Give Me Your Children.” The capitalists will want everything eventually. The workers will argue with the bureaucrats and the bureaucrats will say, like Rumkowski, “We don’t deal with hotheads—submit.” A thorough overthrow of the union bureaucracy and a breaking with the Democratic Party will be a two-pronged task foisted upon the working class if they decide to fight rather than submit. The CIO pioneers had it easy compared to what the future U.S. working class will have to deal with when it comes their turn.

—Brian Schwartz