Will Obama Fulfill Pledge and Walk Congress Hotel Picket Line? (video he did in 2007)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=6335

by Randy Shaw‚ Dec. 01‚ 2008


Senator Barack Obama walks the picket line in 2007.


Organized labor provided unprecedented backing to Barack Obama this fall because activists believe he “walks the walk” rather than simply “talks the talk.” Case in point occurred in Chicago on June 16, 2007, when Obama joined a UNITE HERE Local 1 picket line at the Congress Hotel. The Congress strike began in 2003, and is the nation’s longest. After walking the line (see video here) Obama vowed to return to join the striking picketers after he was elected President.

Will Obama become the first sitting President to walk a picket line? Should labor activists push him to keep this pledge, or should it use it as leverage to help secure systemic changes? The Congress Hotel strike is not the only labor campaign Obama has weighed in on – in September, he lent momentum to the campaign for free and fair union elections at California’s St. Joseph Health System, saying the hospital workers there were standing up for “American values.” As some criticize Obama’s commitment to change, it is in his fulfilling of promises to labor that may be the best test of his progressive credentials.

My new book discusses UNITE HERE’s Congress Hotel strike and boycott, among the many examples of the union’s bringing the tactics and strategies of the UFW grape boycott into the Age of the Internet. Barack Obama joined the picket line on the fourth anniversary of the dispute on June 16, 2007, and, as Chicago faith-based labor activist C.J. Hawking recently reminded me, pledged to return to join the picketers after being elected President.

Obama’s public commitment to join UNITE HERE’s picket line has not gotten much public attention. And I cannot even imagine former Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton on a union picket line in a labor dispute.

But if you watch the video linked above, you will see that Obama looks and sounds like the community organizer he once was. He seems right at home among the strikers.

snip

The United States is not only the only industrialized nation without universal health care; it is also the only such country whose labor laws are designed to prevent unionization. The fact that only 7% of private sector workers are unionized is a function of many factors, but among the biggest is that federal laws encourage employer tactics that prevent unions.

To address this problem, organized labor is about to launch an all-out campaign to enact the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). EFCA would allow workers to form unions through the card-check process, rather than through an election by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB.)

Wal-Mart and other non-union employers like our labor laws just as they are, and describe EFCA in doomsday terms. Defeating the measure is corporate America’s top priority for 2009, and while Obama and top House and Senate Democrats are committed to EFCA, the Senate may not have a filibuster-proof majority for the bill.


FULL story at link.