http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21429By Dick Meister May 11, 2009
Barack Obama the presidential candidate declared that the nation needed "a president who doesn't choke on the word 'union.'" But now that Obama has assumed the presidency - and good riddance to his virulently anti-union predecessor -- is he delivering on his promise to lead a pro-union administration?
Absolutely, says the AFL-CIO, which played a major role in Obama's victory. The federation spent more than $450 million and put more than a quarter-million volunteers to work in its campaigns for Obama and pro-labor congressional candidates, and turned out millions of union voters.
"The political pendulum is swinging back toward sanity," says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "Barack Obama brings new hope to America's working families."
It is clear, in any case, that Obama's strong support for unions is genuine. He really meant it when he said -- not while campaigning for labor votes, but after his election - that "I want to strengthen the union movement in this country and put an end to the barriers and roadblocks that are in the way of workers legitimately coming together in order to form a union and bargain collectively."
Imagine George Bush making such a statement. He would indeed have been very likely to choke.
Obama already has done a lot to back up his words. For starters, he quickly rescinded some of the most damaging of the anti-worker executive orders that Bush had issued. One had allowed White House staffers to overturn, in behalf of Bush's employer allies, job safety regulations that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had promulgated. Obama ordered that those regulations and some new ones go into effect immediately.
FULL story at link.
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