A century ago, labor unions opposed government health insurance
It’s for these reasons that labor unions historically opposed government-sponsored health insurance. Unions have long known that a major reason that people join unions—and thereby a major source of their income and power—comes from their role as the middleman who negotiates health benefit plans with employers. If the government offered health insurance directly to workers, workers would have much less need to unionize.
Over time, however, unions came to see government-sponsored health coverage as a way to expand the coalition of progressive voters who supported a more expansive government generally. And so unions got on board with Obamacare, and fought hard for its passage and for Obama’s re-election.
The great irony—one that union leaders are only now starting to recognize—is that by doing so, they’ve accelerated their own demise, at least in the private sector. Today, less than 7 percent of American private-sector workers are unionized. That number will continue to decline as workers realize they don’t need unions for their health benefits. The labor movement will increasingly become comprised of public-sector unions, giving it a far different character than it has today.
