Belabored Podcast #131: A Crisis of Care, with June Barrett and Saba Waheed

Belabored Podcast #131: A Crisis of Care, with June Barrett and Saba Waheed

Home care is one of the most rapidly growing fields in the country, but workers and care recipients will be under threat if Trump slashes Medicaid. We talk about what’s at stake in the healthcare reform fight.

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As our population grows grayer and our hospital systems increasingly strained, homecare workers have become a critical part of community-based healthcare for our elders and family members with disabilities. The country now faces a crisis in home-based health services, as consumers struggle to pay and providers struggle with poverty wages. Despite the tremendous unmet needs for quality homecare services, the latest Republican Trumpcare proposals threaten to slash wages, bleed our social service infrastructure and force families into poverty and institutionalization. We speak with labor advocates and workers about what’s at stake in the healthcare reform fight, for workers and and for the communities they help heal.

In other news, we track the latest labor actions at airports a hard-fought unionization drive for Mississippi auto workers, striking nurses at Tufts Medical Center, and unions invest in Chicago’s hometown paper. Plus recommended reading on Marx on Constitutional law and class politics in the UK.

If you think our work is worth supporting as we soldier on through Trumplandia, please consider becoming a sustaining member of Belabored or donating or subscribing to Dissent. Help keep us going for the next 131 episodes!

News

New York-area airport employees temporarily halt strike as negotiations get underway (New York Daily News)

Talks Continue as Airport Workers Prepare for Possible Strike (SEIU 32BJ)

Tufts Medical Center Nurses Go On Strike (WBUR)

‘We want to work’: Nurses locked out at Tufts Medical Center (Boston Globe)

U.A.W. Says Nissan Workers Seek a Union Vote in Mississippi (New York Times)

Michelle: Mississippi Autoworkers Mobilize (Dissent)

Sarah and Michelle: Belabored Podcast #123: Marching on Mississippi, with Morris Mock and Danny Glover (Dissent)

Union group led by Eisendrath outduels Trib owner to acquire Sun-Times (Chicago Sun Times)

Conversation: 

with June Barrett, homecare worker from Miami, and Saba Waheed, Research Director, UCLA Labor Center

Sarah: Home care workers have our lives in their hands. They’re paid only $10 an hour (Guardian)

Michelle: With Medicaid And Health Care Under Attack, Home Care For The Aging Faces Crisis (Truthout)

Michelle: Trump’s Medicaid and immigration policies will make home health care more expensive and more rare (Mic)

Argh, I Wish I’d Written That!

Michelle: Bertell Ollman, Toward a Marxist Interpretation of the US Constitution (Jacobin)

Sarah: Richard Seymour, Your incorrect theory of class (Patreon)