Economy & Trade, Headlines, Labour, North America

POLITICS-US: Obama Surges in Race for Union Support

Mark Weisenmiller

TAMPA, Florida, Jul 15 2008 (IPS) - With at least 10 national unions giving their formal endorsements to Democratic Senator Barack Obama in his quest for the presidency, Republican rival John McCain finds himself lagging badly in the battle for labour’s support in the November election.

Another 12 unions that endorsed Obama’s former arch-enemy for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton, are also expected to transfer their endorsements to Obama. If this happens, it will bring him millions more votes.

Max Vekich, legislative action president for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), told IPS, “I think that Sen. McCain was at first generally seen in high regard by our union members for his military service. They like his patriotism and they appreciate his service, but they’d never vote for him. Sen. McCain served his country, God bless him, but that’s not going to solve our economic problems.”

The ILWU has 50,000 members and endorsed Obama for president in late February. Vekich, who is based in Seattle, Washington, also said that many members of the union had a personal reason to vote against the Republican candidate.

“President [George W.] Bush invoked [the anti-union] Taft-Hartley [Labour Act of 1947] against us in 2002, and McCain backed Bush about it, and we saw that as an attempt to break our union,” Vekich said. “Our members remember this and we have used that as a reason to keep our members politically informed this election year.”

According to the latest polls, easily the number one issue for voters of all political stripes is the sorry state of the U.S. economy. High oil prices, a massive and spreading home mortgage crisis, and the weakened power of the U.S. dollar have led to major stock market slides and job losses.


Four dollar-a-gallon gas prices – in some parts of California, that figure is now five dollars – a rise in food prices, and the outsourcing of jobs overseas are adding to the country’s economic woes.

One poll for Time magazine conducted in late June found that 44 percent of respondents believed Obama would be “best able to handle the economy”, compared to 37 percent who chose McCain. Another, for ABC News and the Washington Post during the same period, also found that 52 percent trusted Obama more on economic issues, compared to 36 percent for McCain.

“Senator Obama is very good at engaging our union members and talking with them about the issues that they’re interested in,” said Phil Smith, communications director for the Virginia-based United Mine Workers of America (UMW).

The 105,000-member union endorsed Obama in late May. “He’s for keeping American jobs in America and we’re certainly for that. We agree with his position on retirement pensions [that they should not be subjected to cuts], for health care, and for competency in mining safety,” added Smith.

So is there anything that Senator McCain can do to woo organised labour at this point? Smith quickly responded, “I think it’s too late for that. I really don’t believe our members have any respect for Senator McCain other then the fact that he served his country honourably. They are grateful for that, but ever since he went to Washington, he’s been a friend of Big Business and done nothing for the working man.”

By demonstrating their organising capabilities and political power during the 2008 presidential campaign, U.S. unions may finally be rising out of a decades-long doldrums. In 1960, one out of every three workers in the United States belonged to a union. Today, that figure has dwindled to about 15 percent of the workforce.

Many reasons exist for the decline, including financial problems and infighting among union officers (especially during the 1950s and 1960s); anti-union campaigns and deregulation under the Ronald Reagan administration; an increasingly competitive global economy; and a shift away from U.S. manufacturing.

Yet with Senator Obama’s presidential campaign, union members see 2008 as the year they again play a major part in the U.S. economy and also the running of the country.

One major issue for unions has been free trade, embraced by McCain but sharply criticised by Obama, particularly the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

NAFTA, which took effect in January 1994, created a free trade zone among Mexico, Canada and the United States. Labour unions and others say the pact has led to the outsourcing of union jobs, many of which ended up in Mexico.

During a debate in South Carolina on Jan. 21, Obama – who was not in Congress when NAFTA was initially approved – called it “devastating” and “a mistake”. He also opposes a pending free trade pact with Colombia as lacking adequate protections for Colombian workers.

The largest consortium of unions throughout North America is the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO), which has over 13 million members in over 70 different unions. It has already endorsed Obama for president.

“Working people in this country realise we’re headed in the wrong direction,” Steve Smith, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO, told IPS. “People are looking for a leader who will put working people first and we feel very strongly that Senator Obama’s leadership will do that.”

“This [the 2008 election] isn’t just about unions,” Smith added. “We feel that Senator Obama is coming to this election with a plan to rejuvenate the economy and that Senator McCain is not. If Senator McCain can’t win Ohio or Michigan or Pennsylvania, or any of those primarily working class states, he can’t win the overall election. We really believe that if Obama is elected president, that economic change will begin to happen in America.”

But not everyone is writing off McCain, who has not won a single important labour endorsement, just yet.

“About one-third of labour union members vote Republican. In many cases, union members are pro-gun (rights), anti-abortion, and conservative on many social issues, and so they’ve voted Republican in the past few presidential elections,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

 
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