Hotmail
Trust at issue as Obama courts union voters
 | Slide show |
 | Race for the presidency The trips, the speeches, and the moments of Decision ’08. A look at the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain. more photos |
Obama vows labor-friendly presidency
In a steady and predictable performance without any surprises in it, Obama hit all the right notes for the Trenton crowd, endorsing the right to unionize and to use a “card check” system to choose union representation rather than going through a secret ballot as now required by federal law.
He vowed to appoint people sympathetic to unions to the National Labor Relations Board, the arbiter of workplace disputes.
“It’s been a long time since we had a president who stood up and said unions are good thing,” he noted. “It’s been a long time since we had a president who said workers are not getting their fair share.”
Obama pleased United Food and Commercial Workers member Kathy Wilder with his answer to her question, “What are your intentions about Wal-Mart?”
“I won’t shop there,” he promised and urged the company to share more of its profits with its employees.
Asked after the forum whether Sen. Hillary Clinton’s service on the Wal-Mart board of directors some 20 years ago would be a liability for her, Wilder said, “Yeah, it should be problem.”
A gray-haired man in the back row of the crowd of 1,200 nodded in assent as Obama discussed the 1968 Memphis garbage workers strike, the event that drew the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to that city, where he was assassinated.
The Memphis garbage collecters “eventually won the right to unionize, and they eventually won a contract,” Obama said.
|
Jobs that can be off-shored and those that can’t
Picking up trash in Memphis is one job that can’t be off-shored to Brazil or China.
The garbage worker’s job may be more secure than the steelworker’s, the textile worker’s or that of the customer service representative for a telecom company.
It was noteworthy at the AFL-CIO forum that of the unionized workers who got to pose questions to Obama, all except one were in non-“off-shore-able” jobs: a casino worker from Caesars hotel in Atlantic City, a technician for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, a cashier at a Pathmark supermarket, a teacher in the Newark public schools and a worker at Verizon.
Only Ruffey, the warehouseman in Perth Amboy, represented the workers whose jobs could be sent off to Brazil.
Obama implied or promised that in an Obama presidency there would be more spending on public education, more spending on roads and other infrastructure, and a program of helping companies with “re-insurance” of their sickest and most costly employees.
He also vowed that “by the end of my first term we will have national health care.”
One unasked question at Tuesday’s AFL-CIO forum was, how does America produce the wealth to pay for the things that Obama promises to deliver?
If high-wage jobs once done in New Jersey are outsourced to other nations, there are fewer high-wage earners to tax.
While not addressing that issue, Obama did point to one source of money for new road, bridge and tunnel projects: “Resources could have gone into building infrastructure” in the United States, he said, but instead “went to Iraq.”
His crowd-pleasing answer was followed up with a promise to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq.
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
-
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM BARACK OBAMA NEWS |
 Barack Obama News Section Front |
| Add Barack Obama News headlines to your news reader: |
Sponsored links
Resource guide