The labor activists’ position represented a departure from the voluntarist view held until 1935 by leaders of the American Federation of labor (AFL), a leading affiliation of labor unions; the voluntarist view stressed workers’ right to freedom from government intrusions into their lives and represented national health insurance as a threat to workers’ privacy. AFL president Samuel Gompers, presuming to speak for all workers, had positioned the AFL as a leading opponent of the proposals for national health insurance that were advocated beginning in 1915 by the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL), an organization dedicated to the study and reform of labor laws. Gompers’ opposition to national health insurance was partly principled, arising from the premise that governments under capitalism invariably served employers’, not workers’, interests. Gompers feared the probing of government bureaucrats into workers’ lives, as well as the possibility that government-mandated health insurance, financed in part by employers, could permit companies to require employee medical examinations that might be used to discharge disabled workers.
Yet the AFL’s voluntarism had accommodated certain exceptions: the AFL had supported government intervention on behalf of injured workers and child laborers. AFL officials drew the line at national health insurance, however, partly out of concern for their own power. The fact that AFL outsiders such as the AALL had taken the most prominent advocacy roles antagonized Gompers. That this reform threatened union-sponsored benefit programs championed by Gompers made national health insurance even more objectionable.
Indeed, the AFL leadership did face serious organizational divisions. Many unionists, recognizing that union-run health programs covered only a small fraction of union members and that unions represented only a fraction of the nation’s workforce, worked to enact compulsory health insurance in their state legislatures. This activism and the views underlying it came to prevail in the United States labor movement and in 1935 the AFL unequivocally reversed its position on health legislation.
问题(我只找到了4道，希望streamsun同学确认下)
24. Q24:
The passage suggests which of the following about the voluntarist view held by leaders of the AFL regarding health care?
A. It was opposed by the AALL.
B. It was shared by most unionists until 1935.
D. It maintained that employer-sponsored health care was preferable to union-run health programs.
E. It was based on the premise that the government should protect child laborers but not adult workers.
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25. Q25:
The primary purpose of the passage is to
A. account for a labor organization’s success in achieving a particular goal
B. discuss how a labor organization came to reverse its position on a particular issue英语作文
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