If you like the insurance you have, you can....

We've heard it a ton: "if you like the health insurance you've got, you can keep it". Yeah. If you like the employer-based, for-profit policy you have... you can keep it, right?

Well, it turns out that you cant.

As Lee Sustar over at socialistworker.org reports:

"About 75 workers at SK walked out August 25, about three months after the company--which makes the popular Craftsman brand tools for Sears--cut off their Blue Cross/Blue Shield health coverage.

"I've worked here 23 years, and I've always had that plan," said striker Norma Trinidad. "Unilaterally, without any notice, they cut off our health insurance. What he did was 100 percent wrong."

Many workers found out about the cutoff only when they sought medical care. "People walked into Walgreens to get their prescriptions filled and were told that they owe $300 or $400, when ordinarily it was $40 or $50," Trinidad said."

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Nativism/racism lurking in British wildcat strikes

There's been a wave of recent wildcat Strikes among British construction (and other industries) workers, brandishing signs calling for "British jobs for British Workers". While labor militancy is usually something that I categorically welcome, it is becoming clear that this phenomenon is deeply complicated by nativism, racism and xenophobia. British fascists are unsurprisingly ecstatic.

Read the UK SWP's statement on "British Jobs for British Workers" here.

Lenin's Tomb has had a series of thoughtful posts on this troubling development, the most recent of which notes that resisting the temptation to either cheerlead for the wildcat Strikers or to wholly dismiss them as racist xenophobes is the starting point for any reflective, critical analysis.

Over at Histomat, the most recent post laments that:

"Unfortunately, Britain has also been hit over the last week by 'the wrong kind of strikes' - ie. not strikes against the power of capital or even against a particular multinational or national capitalist enterprise - but a strike against er, other workers. Genius."

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"We refuse to pay for the capitalist crisis"

Massive protests across France are erupting in conjunction with huge strikes to protest the government's handling of the economic crisis.

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