Labor and Veterans United: Fighting Privatization of the VA, Medicare, and USPS

Start: Wednesday, November 13, 2024 6:00 PM

End: Wednesday, November 13, 2024 7:30 PM

Location:Teamsters Local 340 Hall27 Main Street, South Portland, ME 04106 US


Union members, military veterans, and health care reformers around the country are fighting privatization of traditional Medicare and the VA hospital system, two of our best working models for single payer healthcare. At the US Postal Service, which employs more than 100,000 veterans, workers are also resisting business-backed efforts to replace our national network of post offices with private mail delivery firms. At this community-labor forum on November 13, find out more about all three struggles to defend key public programs and services against out-sourcing and de-funding. Please share this invite with fellow union members, VA patients and their families, and all supporters of Medicare and the USPS, in labor and the community.


Speakers:

Suzanne Gordon is an award-winning journalist, author, and ally of healthcare workers. She has written for the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, American Prospect, The Nation, and many other publications. She is the co-author of Our Veterans: Winners,Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs (Duke University Press) and wrote two previous books about VA care-giving. She is a longtime advocate for nurse-patient staffing ratios, single-payer healthcare, and expansion and improvement of Medicare coverage. She co-founded the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, which partners with VA patients, their families, veterans organizations, and VA unions in campaigns against privatization of the VA. She belongs to the NewsGuild/CWA.


Steve Early was a Boston-based International Union rep for the Communications Workers of American for nearly thirty years. He was involved in contract campaigns, bargaining, and strikes in telecom, manufacturing, and other industries. He assisted CWA Local 1400 in its organizing and representation of many call center workers in Maine and other New England states. In addition to co-authoring Our Veterans, he has written four other books about labor or politics, including Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City and Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress. Early has served on the editorial advisory committees for four labor-related publications–Labor Notes, New Labor Forum, WorkingUSA and Social Policy. He belongs to both the National Writers Union and the NewsGuild/CWA.


Jose Vasquez Jose is the Executive Director of Common Defense, a diverse grassroots organization of U.S. veterans and military family members. Jose served 15 years in the U.S. Army and was honorably discharged in 2007. Jose has experience in education and research, nonprofit management, organizing, and philanthropy. He lives in New York City.



Thank you to our co-sponsor: CWA Local 1400.

This event is accessible
Sponsored by
Usm_logo_scontras_center_lockup_high-res_web
Portland, ME