Deluzio, McBride Reintroduce Bill to Protect Healthcare Rights for Striking Workers

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Congressman Chris Deluzio (PA-17) and Congresswoman Sarah McBride (DE-AL) reintroduced their proposal to protect striking or locked-out workers from being cut off from their healthcare. As workers exercise their right to strike, employers too often use their power to cancel or threaten to cancel health insurance for striking or locked out workers. This has happened all across the country, including in Western Pennsylvania.

"Workers have a right to strike, and we have to defend that right by protecting workers from unfair strike-breaking tactics," said Congressman Deluzio. "No company should be able to hold a worker's health - or the well-being of their family - hostage during a labor dispute. We need a level playing field, and this bill puts the act of ripping health insurance away from striking workers out of bounds."

"No worker should be forced to choose between exercising their right to strike and protecting their family's health," said Congresswoman McBride. "When employers cut off health care during a strike or lockout, they aren't negotiating. Workers deserve a voice at the table without having their lives or livelihoods held hostage. I'm proud to work with Congressman Deluzio to defend the right to organize, stand up for working families, and make sure that no one's health is used as a bargaining chip."

While the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) establishes workers' right to strike as a protected activity and employees cannot be fired for striking, they can, and often do, threaten to cut workers' healthcare as a coercive silencing tactic. The Deluzio and McBride bill, the Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection Act,would create a separate unfair labor practice category for when employers cut or alter workers' health insurance while they are on strike or locked out, and violators would be subject to increasing levels of civil penalties.

Under this bill, employers who commit the new type of unfair labor practice violation created in this proposal will be subject to civil monetary penalties reflective of their history of violations, their size, the scope of the harm, and the public interest - a mechanism like what is used in the PRO Act.

Cutting off health insurance for striking or locked out workers threatens the health and wellbeing of workers, their families, and their communities, and has occurred in workplaces across the country.

This is not just a hypothetical issue: this is an ongoing threat to workers. Many Pittsburgh Post-Gazetteworkers have been without healthcare for two and a half years as they strike in response to unfair labor practices by the newspaper's owner, Block Communications, which is blocking workers from the affordable healthcare, wages, and the respect of union contracts that they need. Block Communications had refused to keep the existing health insurance coverage for workers involved in mailing, printing and distributing the paper. Subsequently, Block Communications terminated striking journalists' healthcare plans, leaving them and their families without healthcare coverage from the company altogether. The Communications Workers of America's (CWA) strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazetteis the longest-running ongoing strike in the country.

"CWA members at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and all across the country know all too well the power of corporations that hold our healthcare hostage. It is totally unconscionable for a company to cut off workers' healthcare--putting the health of workers and their families in jeopardy--in retaliation for them standing up to protect their rights and dignity on the job. CWA is proud to support the Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection and thanks Representatives Deluzio and McBride for their fearless leadership in standing up to protect workers' healthcare and rights," said Communications Workers of America (CWA) Director of Government Affairs Dan Mauer.

"Too many large employers claim to respect their workers-until those workers ask for something they don't want to provide, such as decent wages. And some employers are quick to engage in cruel retaliatory tactics. When employees try to exercise their right to withhold their labor, some employers take away health insurance, such as we saw recently with the Temple University Graduate Students' Association. Until our country's labor laws are reformed to level the playing field, stopgap laws are necessary to protect working people who have to resort to a strike to make their voices heard. This bill would create an unfair labor practice category with civil monetary penalties when employers deny important benefits to workers who walk off the job. Reps. Deluzio and McBride stand with workers, and this legislation would meaningfully protect the health and livelihoods of striking workers. I urge all members of Congress to support this legislation and pass it immediately," said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

"Being locked out or forced to strike is always difficult for workers, but a labor dispute is a necessary tool for workers to maintain as a last resort when employers resist negotiating in good faith. Yet too often employers attempt to leverage the threat of cutting off workers' health insurance to limit this power and influence bargaining. We commend Reps. Deluzio and McBride for reintroducing the Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection Act which would help balance the scales as workers pursue fair wages and safe working conditions," said United Steelworkers President Dave McCall.

In late March 2025, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a rare injunction ordering the newspaper to restore the health care it illegally took from its employees and return to the bargaining table. This ruling has both enforcement power and directly addresses strikers' demands. On April 30th, that same federal court rejected two attempts by the Post-Gazette to delay the ruling to restore pre-2020 healthcare to all journalists working at the paper. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered the newspaper to pay back workers for all wage and vacation reductions and increased health care costs it forced onto workers in 2020, along with restoring all the other bargained rights it tore up five years ago. The Third Circuit Court is set to rule on enforcement of that full order.

Members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union (BCTGM) Local 37 went without health care benefits for nearly two months in 2022 while on strike against Rich Products at the Jon Donaire Desserts plant in Santa Fe Springs, California. GM dropped workers' health care coverage during the nationwide UAW strike in 2019, including workers in Ohio. And in February 2022, Raytheon Technologies, owner of Collins Aerospace's Plant in Troy, Ohio, tried to force nearly 300 employees, members of UAW Local 128, into an unfair contract by locking them out and withholding their paychecks and access to health insurance after management and the local union did not reach an agreement.

You can find the full text here.

Photos of Congressman Deluzio and striking Post-Gazette workers are available here.

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