Buzzfeed reported today that nearly 10,000 Las Vegas casino workers might go on strike because they want to maintain their current healthcare benefits, benefits that ObamaCare has put in jeopardy:
Contract negotiations are stalled for thousands of workers at casinos on the Strip and in downtown Las Vegas to the point where they may go on strike — and the sticking point is Obamacare.
On Feb. 20, thousands of housekeepers, porters, cooks, cocktail servers, and others represented by Nevada’s largest union, the Culinary Union Local 226, voted to end a contract extension the workers agreed to last summer. The union wants to maintain its current benefits — including health care coverage at no cost to workers, pensions, and guaranteed 40-hour work weeks.
Rising health care costs due to provisions in the Affordable Care Act could put those benefits in jeopardy, the union says.
“The biggest hurdle to reaching settlements in Vegas is the new costs imposed on our health plan by Obamacare,” Donald “D” Taylor, president of Unite Here, the parent union of CU Local 226, told BuzzFeed in a statement. “Even though the president and Congress promised we could keep our health plan, the reality is, unless the law is fixed, that won’t be true.”
Yes, the same law that Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) unequivocally supports, and that Erin Bilbray-Kohn (D-NV) said restored healthcare “as a basic cornerstone of security for the middle class,” is the exact thing threatening the healthcare coverage of middle class workers.
It’s no wonder then that the union workers that Nevada Democrats “have long counted on” to get out the vote “might stay home” come Election Day.