"I Saw A Paid Culinary 226 Union Organizer Heckle Bernie Sanders.. I Haven't Stopped Wondering Why"

[Cal Carpenter]

Note: this is from December of 2019, long before this month's media coverage:

I Saw A Paid Culinary 226 Union Organizer Heckle Bernie Sanders And I Haven’t Stopped Wondering Why

I believe labor unions are the backbone of high productivity and a great quality of life. I’m a dues paying member of Culinary 226 in Las Vegas, NV. I’m on the contract committee and I’m a shop steward. All volunteer positions. I’m a waitress, a single parent and progressive activist: workers’ rights mean everything to me. After 16 years with this union, I am proud of what was accomplished before my time and hopeful about how we can continue to build on that. ...

In December 2019, I attended a Bernie Sanders town hall held by the Culinary Union 226 in Las Vegas and I witnessed a paid organizer rallying a small group to heckle Senator Bernie Sanders. This was right after a staged question about how Senator Sanders would accommodate the union to keep our insurance during and after the implementation of Medicare For All. Positing that all the members want to keep their union insurance instead of Medicare For All. For me, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I need to speak from my own perspective since I have been erased from the conversation. Despite the uncanny familiarity of The Irishman film, the promise of being shunned or worse by a huge portion of the 60,000 and the fact that I’m one of the few active people who work at my particular restaurant, I still won’t cower in fear from fascism in any form: foreign or domestic. I would trade my union insurance for Medicare For All today.

--snip---

Sadly, the illusion of elitism lies at the core of this issue. For years, I would be hit with pangs of guilt when I told people outside of the union what type of insurance I had and they wished they had good insurance too. Healthcare is a human right. Unfortunately, many of my fellow union members are echoing the “ I paid off my student loans so no one should get loan forgiveness” trope...

--snip---

Medicare For All is a racial justice issue. Medicare For All is an immigrant rights issue. Medicare For All is a disability rights issue Medicare For All is a gender justice issue. Medicare For All is a women’s rights issue. Women are less likely to have their doctors believe their symptoms. Black women have it much worse which shows up in black maternal mortality rates, terminal illness and chronic illnesses. Culinary Health Fund is not exempt from protecting all of its members. I’m not part of the largest voting bloc among members but I deserve to be valued and accommodated by my union too. Maybe this is what happens when your union leans more political than they should. It begs the question, what does my union have to gain from encouraging members to vote against their own interests?

READ MORE


https://medium.com/@marciewells/i-saw-a-paid-culinary-226-union-organizer-heckle-bernie-sanders-and-i-havent-stopped-wondering-why-cbdf21bc4aa1

Further reading on this topic:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/01/why-would-a-union-oppose-medicare-for-all

[brooklynite]

1. Better to quit while you're behind...

[George II]

2. Bazinga!

[Cal Carpenter]

3. Not surprised that you'd dismiss the perspective of the actual rank-and-file.

You go ahead and ignore this black, female, chronically ill restaurant worker who states:

"I have been erased from the conversation".

Just keep on erasing marginalized people. Super charming.

[brooklynite]

10. If only they banded together to fight for their needs? Maybe call it a....."Union"?

[Cal Carpenter]

11. I've stood with UAW members protesting their own union leadership

I stand with the rank-and-file.

[brooklynite]

13. And you know what the rank and file thinks? Do tell!

[Cal Carpenter]

18. You could start by reading the link in my OP

Guess we've gone full circle.

This has been fun. We should do it again sometime

[brooklynite]

20. Your link is the opinion of ONE member. In the data biz we call that statistically insignificant

[Cal Carpenter]

25. Maybe we'll get a more meaningful sample size after this circulates for a bit

Link to tweet

[Indepatriot]

4. Notice they did not endorse today as announced they would.

Seems the rank & file smell a big fat Neara Tanden rat.

[Cal Carpenter]

6. Ooooh, interesting, I didn't even know that yet!

[Indepatriot]

8. They announced they would not endorse, but would issue a "scorecard"

Seems Bernie's lifetime of standing with unions withstood the attempted ratfucking

[ChubbyStar]

9. Rock on 226! Feel the Bern brothers and sisters

[George II]

7. They didn't endorse anyone in the 2016 primary, either.

[George II]

5. Sure, they set up an expensive Town Hall for Sanders just so they can pay people.....

....to heckle him?

By the way, if you check @marciewells on medium, you'll see that she makes a career out of bashing Democrats.

[progressoid]

12. They did say in their release that they welcomed him to their events in the past.

It's not unreasonable to think that a few people in attendance at one of these events also don't like him and might heckled him.

[George II]

15. Yes I'm sure of that, but the headline implies that the hecklers were paid by the union to do so.

[progressoid]

16. I think you inferred that.

It said a paid organizer. Not that the union paid that organizer to heckle.

Just like a Bernie Bro doing something stupid doesn't mean it's at the direction of Bernie.

[DanieRains]

28. Putin Btos Maybe?

Its so easy getting Americans to fight each other.

[totodeinhere]

14. That union sells its own health insurance and the union leaders have a vested interest in

keeping it that way. So naturally they are against MFA and they are leading their members around by the nose on this issue.

[comradebillyboy]

17. You appear to be accusing the culinary union of corruption, self dealing and

financial wrongdoing. Can you back up those accusations?

[OilemFirchen]

32. Well, the woman cited in the article implied that the union is mobbed up.

Not terribly eloquently, but:

Despite the uncanny familiarity of The Irishman film...

[George II]

19. Can you document that?

[totodeinhere]

21. Here.

https://www.culinaryhealthfund.org/

[George II]

27. You said: "That union sells its own health insurance and the union leaders....

....have a vested interest in keeping it that way. So naturally they are against MFA and they are leading their members around by the nose on this issue."

That's not true. This is what they say at the link you gave me:

The Culinary Health Fund is a multi-employer Taft-Hartley Fund. We were established in 1981. We’re funded by collective bargaining agreements that are negotiated by unions and funded by employers. This means, we work with unions and employers to give our participants great benefits. A board of trustees governs us. This makes sure both employers and workers have a voice in all of The Fund’s choices.

They administer a trust fund governed by a Board of Trustees. It's not the the Union Leaders' "own health insurance" and they don't have a "vested interest" in keeping it that way.

Here's more information about Taft-Hartley Trust Funds:

http://www.macoalthtf.org/taft-hartley-trust-funds.html

"Payments of these benefits are made from a trust which is funded by employer contributions established through negotiations. Funding also comes from income through investments made with the assets of the trust."

[RandySF]

30. There's no premium or co-pay

So what is the fantasy scenario by which union bosses are getting rich?

[George II]

31. I explained how the Trust Fund works in post #27.

[Progressive dog]

22. Unions have always been political by necessity.

Just like political parties, they try to act in the best interest of the majority. All their constitutional officers are elected and can be voted out if the rank and file don't agree with them. Those leaders get to hire and manage the union staff.
They've explained, in an easy to understand way, that they don't intend to trade away a negotiated benefit for a vague plan that stands zero chance of passing into law. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

[Uncle Joe]

24. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for the thread Cal Carpenter.

[OnDoutside]

26. Conspiracy theory 101...I met a man who said.....

[Nanjeanne]

29. Thanks for this. A member of the Union with her own perspective is a point of view

worth sharing.

[Gothmog]

33. Culinary 226 's spokeswoman tells me they have received "hundreds" of attacks

Link to tweet

[Cal Carpenter]

34. That's reprehensible

It really is.

But I'm not sure what it has to do with a 2 month old essay from a chronically ill, rank-and-file union member who thinks her leadership isn't representing her and her fellow workers as well as they should.

There are at least a couple of other threads about these attacks/threats/doxxing. Maybe you just posted in the wrong place.

[mcar]

35. Did you know this happened today?

Link to tweet

?s=20

So the Sanders campaign is pivoting away from Medicare for All toward a public option on healthcare - after a year-plus of attacking any Democrat who opposed pure M4A. It's clearly a long-planned tactical shift for the Super Tuesday electorate. Will anyone write that story?

[Cal Carpenter]

36. What, someone tweeted a speculation about the Sanders campaign?

Are they referring to AOC's comments that Sanders will likely have to compromise on the M4A plan?

Of course he will. There is nothing new or surprising about that. Anyone who thinks this is a surprise has been believing the crap about Bernie chasing unicorns. This isn't a "long-planned tactical shift", it is a political reality and Bernie has been in politics long enough to know how things really work.

I'll just paste what I wrote on another thread about it:

"Look, as much as Bernie gets written off as living in a fantasy land, he knows that he isn't going to get the perfect bills passed. But he also knows if you start from a point of compromising too far, you end up with nothing good. We saw what happened with the ACA. Too much was conceded too soon, which allowed states to deny the expansion of Medicaid, for example. (As someone who gets my insurance through the exchange, don't get me wrong - it is better than nothing, but not even close to good enough, and it gets both worse and more expensive for me each year).

So you have to start with a better-than-perfect bill just to end up with something pretty good. Bernie's principles don't change, but he isn't the "purist" he gets accused of being. He does compromise or he wouldn't be voting the party line with the Dems the vast majority of the time."

[Scurrilous]

37. Nice.