As the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors continues into its third day, GM has announced that it is ending healthcare coverage for striking workers.
This is one of the many, many perversities of the American system of health care. Most Americans gain health insurance through their employers; it follows that if they incur the holy ire of their employers, their families will no longer have that health insurance. Given how difficult and time-consuming it is to find a new policy, and (until passage of the Affordable Care Act) the lumping of your every health need met under your old policy into a "pre-existing condition" bin that the next policy may not cover, that has been a powerful tool for retaining workers that may otherwise have not put up with degrading employment conditions.
In this case, the UAW will now be taking on striker's health insurance themselves. Striking workers are entitled to a union-paid COBRA continuation of their policies. It will be very expensive for the union, though not nearly as expensive as the ongoing strike will be for GM.
At the core of the strike are the concessions union workers made to save GM from bankruptcy in 2009, during the financial crisis. That crisis is over, and GM's profits were $8.1 billion last year, but GM has been unwilling to give up those concessions. On the contrary, paltry raises, escalating worker healthcare costs, and a two-tiered pay system that squeezes new hires have been joined by new plant closures—despite a 2015 contract prohibiting them—in moving the union to strike.
There is little indication of how long the strike will go; union negotiators say GM's first serious attempt to negotiate came only hours before the strike began. But striking workers have considerable national support: In addition to solidarity shown by numerous top Democrats, the Teamsters are honoring UAW picket lines, halting the flow of GM vehicles to dealerships.