Trust at issue as Obama courts union voters

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

TRENTON, N.J. - In 1988 it was Dick Gephardt surging to the lead in the Democratic presidential fray with television ads bashing the South Korean Hyundai Motor Co. and the Seoul government for restricting sales of Chryslers in Korea.

In 1996 the buzz word was “downsizing.” Republican contender Pat Buchanan parlayed that issue and his screed against NAFTA into a startling upset victory in the New Hampshire primary.

For the 2008 race, "globalization" and “off-shoring” are the in-vogue terms to denote what union members fear most.

But voters who belong to unions always seem to get their hopes up early in the presidential cycle only to have them dashed in the long run.

Sen. Barack Obama played suitor to organized labor at an AFL-CIO forum Monday at the War Memorial in Trenton, N.J., and for some in the audience, the issue was trust.

Although unemployment stands at a remarkably low 4.5 percent, union members complained in their questions to Obama about the cost of health insurance, the fear of low-wage competition from other countries and the difficulty of getting bosses to agree to union representation for workers.

One who got to pose a question to Obama was Mike Ruffey, a member of the Steelworkers Local 7493, who works as a warehouseman in Perth Amboy, N.J.

His employer, Gerdau Ameristeel, recently laid off 130 people as it shifted some manufacturing to Brazil.

Can any president stop such economic trends?

“They have to stop promising; they have to start acting, that’s the thing,” said Ruffey, after hearing Obama.

Lessons of NAFTA
Who brought about ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement that organized labor so passionately fought?

“It was President Clinton,” Ruffey said after the forum had ended. “Who do you trust? Where do you go? You’ve got to hold them (politicians) to what they tell you.”

In his query to Obama, Ruffey told the Illinois Democrat that NAFTA and the Central America Free Trade Agreement had cost American workers “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

Ruffey asked, “How can you ensure a fair trade policy to protect American jobs?”

Obama replied, “Let’s all acknowledge that to some degree globalization is here.…  The world is smaller than it used to be.”

He added, “When we negotiate trade deals, we’ve got to make sure there are strong labor and environmental provisions in those trade deals. They’ve got to be enforceable. You’ve got to be able to go to the WTO (World Trade Organization) and say labor provisions are not being enforced.”

Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel and the Bush administration clinched a deal that will allow some pending bilateral trade pacts to move forward with some additional protections for the rights of foreign workers.

But Obama sounded wary of this deal: “We haven’t actually seen the details…. I want to wait and see what exactly the language is” and make sure the union provisions are strong and enforceable.

In this state, members of union households accounted for one-third of the electorate last November. In a Democratic primary, that percentage is likely to be significantly larger.

And next year the state holds its presidential primary on Feb. 5, one of the “Tsunami Tuesday” contests that could determine who the Democratic nominee is.

Union members in New Jersey know they matter in the 2008 presidential contest.

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