Bernie Sanders is lead­ing in the Neva­da polls, but he faces a major obsta­cle: One of the most pow­er­ful actors in state pol­i­tics has come out swing­ing against his sig­na­ture pro­pos­al — Medicare for All.

"I think capitalism is the reason that they’re coming out against Medicare for All, and it’s just really troubling."

The 60,000-member Culi­nary Work­ers Union announced last Thurs­day that it will remain neu­tral in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry this year. But in the past week, the union has sent out a series of com­mu­ni­ca­tions to mem­bers warn­ing, both direct­ly and indi­rect­ly, that Sanders’ plan threat­ens its hard-won health­care benefits.

One fly­er cir­cu­lat­ed by the union read, ​“Some politi­cians promise … ​‘You will get more mon­ey for wages from the com­pa­ny if you give up Culi­nary Health Insur­ance.’ These politi­cians have nev­er sat at our bar­gain­ing table … We will not hand over our health­care for promises.”

Sanders’ oppo­nents have seized on the open­ing to dou­ble down on argu­ments for pre­serv­ing pri­vate health insur­ance — a posi­tion the union shares.

“There are 14 mil­lion union work­ers in Amer­i­ca who have fought hard for strong, employ­er-pro­vid­ed health ben­e­fits,” tweet­ed for­mer South Bend May­or Pete Buttigieg. ​“Medicare for All Who Want It pro­tects their plans and union mem­bers’ free­dom to choose the cov­er­age that’s best for them.”

Bil­lion­aire Tom Stey­er, mean­while, has start­ed air­ing an ad in Neva­da telling vot­ers that ​“unions don’t like” Sanders’ health­care plan.

Known nation­al­ly as a stan­dard-bear­er for mil­i­tant work­place orga­niz­ing, the Culi­nary Union hasn’t just won health­care ben­e­fits — it runs its own 24-hour health­care cen­ter and phar­ma­cy, exclu­sive­ly for members.

But some mem­bers are dis­il­lu­sioned that the union is flex­ing its mus­cle against a health­care pol­i­cy they believe could deliv­er a wind­fall to unions by free­ing them to focus on oth­er issues at the bar­gain­ing table.

In These Times spoke to Mar­cie Wells, a shop stew­ard with Culi­nary Work­ers 226 who has worked at Jim­my Buffet’s Mar­gar­i­taville inside the Flamin­go Hotel and Casi­no for 16 years. Wells dis­cussed Medicare for All, the union’s endorse­ment deci­sion and her sup­port for Bernie Sanders.

There was a lot of spec­u­la­tion as to whether the union might still endorse Joe Biden. What was your reac­tion to the deci­sion not to endorse any­one in the primary?

[Union lead­ers] said ear­ly on that they were not sure if they were going to endorse. When they called this press con­fer­ence, every­one expect­ed that they were going to go ahead and endorse Biden, because they already said they weren’t endors­ing. So why would you put togeth­er all that just to repeat yourself?

The lit­er­a­ture they put out the night before was not so sub­tle. It had the words ​“one, two, three,” and three can­di­dates in order [Editor’s note: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are list­ed first on the fly­er]. Every­one knows in the cau­cus, you rank your top three choic­es. But they’re not offi­cial­ly endorsing.

I think it sends mixed sig­nals, and it’s dis­ap­point­ing that they’re not being straightforward.

Did the union poll mem­bers about the endorsement?

No, they didn’t. Typ­i­cal­ly, I get called for those types of things, because I’m a shop steward.

Talk­ing one-on-one, a lot of mem­bers want Bernie. But when we’re in the set­ting of city­wide meet­ings or things that are exclu­sive to shop stew­ards, there’s a clear mes­sage that, ​“the per­son who wants Medicare for All wants to take away our hard work.”

It’s dis­ap­point­ing as a progressive.

At a town hall the union held with Sanders in Decem­ber, some mem­bers heck­led over the issue of health­care. Can you describe what you saw happen?

At this type of event, all the ques­tions are planned. When Bernie start­ed talk­ing about health­care, almost on cue, a group start­ed chant­i­ng, ​“Union health­care! Union healthcare!”

When a speak­er said, ​“I don’t want to give up my insur­ance,” I yelled back, ​“I do!”

But aside from what felt like a staged protest, Bernie got a great recep­tion, peo­ple were cheer­ing. I mean, he’s the frickin’ union guy.

The culi­nary union has the rep­u­ta­tion of hav­ing some of the best health­care in Las Vegas. How well does it work for you?

Rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing, it is some of the best. But it doesn’t work well for me, because I have chron­ic ill­ness. I have anky­los­ing spondyli­tis and bilat­er­al uveitis that’s recur­ring. I’ve had this con­di­tion since high school, and I’ve been mis­di­ag­nosed, delayed diag­nosed, not believed as a Black woman, told that I was exag­ger­at­ing my symptoms.

Most recent­ly, my eyes were so inflamed that my eye doc­tor called a rheuma­tol­o­gist in the Culi­nary net­work, and she wasn’t going to be able to see me for 7 months. I had to do a GoFundMe to pay for a doc­tor out­side of my net­work so I could not go blind.

I don’t think the pri­vate insur­ance mar­ket is good for peo­ple with chron­ic ill­ness­es, and I think it’s pret­ty ableist to pre­tend that it is. If I’m wait­ing 8 months to see a spe­cial­ist but I’m hav­ing symp­toms through­out that time, nine times out of 10 I’m going to get fired for miss­ing work. And to even start get­ting that insur­ance in the first place, you have to work 360 hours with­in a cer­tain time frame.

There’s also a copay every time I go to a spe­cial­ist. More like­ly than not, I’ll skip some­thing most months. I would love Medicare for All right about now.

Why do you think the union has come out so strong­ly against Medicare for All?

I think there’s a con­flict of inter­est there. We have a labor union, and a polit­i­cal lob­by with a PAC, and a health­care busi­ness, all wrapped up in one.

They built the Culi­nary Health Cen­ter, so that’s theirs. Word on the street is they’ve already paid for the par­cel of land to build the next one. So they’re in the busi­ness now — they’re the estab­lish­ment to an extent. So I think cap­i­tal­ism is the rea­son that they’re com­ing out against Medicare for All, and it’s just real­ly troubling.

Nevada’s unin­sured rate is 14%, and there are big racial dis­par­i­ties in who doesn’t have insur­ance — in Neva­da it’s indige­nous peo­ple, Black peo­ple, Lati­no peo­ple. Medicare for All is a racial jus­tice issue. For the union to have an 80% demo­graph­ic of [peo­ple of col­or] and be pulling this, it’s just unbe­liev­able. I’m disgusted.

Do you think the mes­sag­ing against Medicare for All will impact how mem­bers vote in the primary?

That’s what’s shit­ty about this whole thing. Some of these peo­ple are going to vote against their best inter­est because they trust­ed the Culi­nary Union.

But a lot of mem­bers do want Bernie. The younger mem­bers, the mem­bers whose young kids are get­ting them involved. I think I flipped a dish­wash­er the oth­er day. So we’re all doing our best, but it’s just dis­heart­en­ing that we’re fight­ing against both the GOP and the union.

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