With the Senate vote-arama commencing this afternoon on the health reform fixes in the reconciliation bill, the AFL-CIO is telling Senators to vote no on any and all amendments – including the public option if it’s introduced.

While unions are pressuring Lynch to support the bill despite the excise tax, it’s clear that at least union member voters in Massachusetts do not want to have their health care plans taxed; those that fear such a tax flocked to the Republican candidate. My guess is that Stephen Lynch is looking at these numbers and making a calculated decision that he’ll stick with the voters on this one.

The AFL-CIO voted to endorse the health care bill despite the increase in the excise tax on all affected health care plans. Additionally, the Merkeley Amendment to require employers in high-risk jobs like construction to provide health insurance was removed from the bill because it wouldn’t impact the budget. Obama apparently promised to pass that bill separately. Good luck with that.

The Change to Win labor federation has unsurprisingly backed the health care bill, even with the increased excise tax on middle class health care plans. Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO’s Executive Committee is still discussing its support for the bill with the increased tax.

This is frankly rather amazing in that totally-saw-it-coming way. We’ve been waiting for days to see the CBO score to see how much the final health care bill will cost, with the goals being to both reduce the deficit and to fit under the arbitrary $900 billion cap posed by Obama.

It seems they’ve been unable to do so, as Ben Smith now reports that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is on his way to the White House to discuss plans by Democrats to actually raise the tax on middle class health care plans in order to pay for the bill.

With Obama set to unveil the pre-Scott Brown health care compromise for next week’s bipartisan lovefest, the already fragile deal is falling apart. Fresh off a stinging slap to the face in which Obama refused to appoint Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, labor unions are apparently backing out of the deal on the excise tax on high-cost health care plans.

Last weekend I was a guest on The Rick Smith Show, a great radio program on labor and issues relating to working families.  Rick and I talked about the deal cut by labor leaders on the Chevy tax in health care reform.  We cut my appearance into a couple YouTube videos in case you want [...]

Washington Post is reporting labor leaders have struck a deal with the White House to avoid having union plans taxed under health care reform. And it really doesn’t look good.

If unions take this deal, it’s a sell-out of epic proportions. I’m hard pressed to think of a deal unions could cut in health care that would cause more long-term damage to not just the credibility of the labor movement, but the middle class.

It looks like the White House’s fragile alliance with labor unions for the health care bill is breaking apart. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has led the charge against the tax employer health care plans (aka Chevy Tax). Now CWA is engaging in an open spat with the White House’s recent defense of the excise tax on its blog.