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Pace of Change Under Obama Frustrates Unions
WASHINGTON - For eight years under George W. Bush, union officials barely set foot inside the White House. But 10 days after President Obama took office, the nation's most powerful labor leaders mingled in the Blue Room, moments after the new president, a man they helped put there, signed a string of executive orders undoing Mr. Bush's policies.
The mood was euphoric. "He walked in with the biggest smile," James P. Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said of Mr. Obama, "saying, ‘Welcome back to your White House.' "
Today that euphoria is giving way to a mixture of frustration and unease, as union leaders are growing concerned that the Obama White House has not delivered as much as they had expected. Some criticize him for not pushing hard enough or moving fast enough on their issues, while others blame the deep recession and Republican opposition for his failure to do more.
Mr. Obama has delayed a push for the unions' No. 1 legislative priority, a measure to make it easier for workers to organize. He faces potential conflict with unions on trade, and on how fast to push for immigration reform. And on health care, friction between labor and the White House is suddenly spilling out into the open.
In response, Mr. Obama is renewing his courtship of the labor movement, whose members worked as foot soldiers in his campaign and spent August doggedly defending his health plan at town-hall-style meetings across the country. On Monday, the president will mark Labor Day by speaking at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. picnic in Cincinnati. During his visit, he is expected to name Ron Bloom, who heads the president's automotive task force, to a second role in the administration as manufacturing czar. The next week, Mr. Obama will address the A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in Pittsburgh.
"He gets an A for effort, and an incomplete for results," the incoming president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Richard L. Trumka.
While labor leaders, including the current A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, John J. Sweeney, say they remain extremely supportive of the president - especially his handling of the economic crisis - Mr. Trumka set off an uproar last week when he warned that unions would not support a health care bill that lacks a government-backed insurance plan. It was a shot across the bow to the White House, which is weighing whether to compromise on the so-called public option.
Another top union leader, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, cautioned that if Mr. Obama abandons the public option, "it will be harder to gin our people up on other issues." Mr. McEntee said he had noticed a shift in sentiment even since July, when 14 union leaders spent 45 minutes in the White House Roosevelt Room with the president and top aides like David Axelrod.
"He said, ‘You've stood shoulder to shoulder with me' - and I'm paraphrasing here - ‘I want you there, and I'm going to fight for you,' " Mr. McEntee said. "When we left, I think we were all on maybe not cloud nine, but cloud four. I shook hands with all the staff, Axelrod was there. This was the person we elected; this was our president with a voice. It felt good." And now? Mr. McEntee paused. "Well," he said, "not as good."
Blue-collar workers have long been a little bit suspicious of Mr. Obama, who has never quite been able to demonstrate that he is one of them. Still, they stood strongly behind him once he became the Democratic presidential nominee, contributing money, running phone banks and knocking on doors in critical swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The two main labor federations, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win, said unions and their political action committees had spent nearly $450 million in the presidential race. The addition of Joseph R. Biden Jr. to the ticket as Mr. Obama's running mate helped with his union bona fides. So did the endorsement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.
Today, Mr. Biden continues to play an important role as a link between the unions and the president. But Mr. Kennedy's death is a significant loss, one that may force Mr. Obama to work that much harder to win union support for any health care compromise he might make, said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist.
"Ted Kennedy was an incredibly important Good Housekeeping seal of approval, and if he lent his prestige to whatever compromise Obama felt he had to make, that would mean an awful lot to people in the labor movement," Mr. Garin said. Mr. Obama, he added, must "persuade labor unions and others that his commitment is to getting it right in the interest of the average working person."
He may have an easier time with some than others. Mr. Hoffa, for instance, said the public option was not a make-or-break provision for him; he is open to legislation containing a "a trigger" to create a public plan if private efforts to expand coverage fail. Mr. McEntee, by contrast, dismissed the trigger idea as "not a real public option."
Dennis Rivera, the point man on health care for the Service Employees International Union, said simply that unions would have to be flexible. "Politics is the art of the possible," he said, adding that Mr. Obama's "heart is in the right place."
Still, there are tensions between unions and the White House on matters beyond health care. Trade is an especially contentious issue; unions are irked that Mr. Obama has backed away from his campaign pledge to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement. And the United Steelworkers, which represents tire workers, is pressing Mr. Obama to punish China now that the United States International Trade Commission has ruled that China is hurting American manufacturers by inundating the market with cheap tires.
Union leaders have also been patient with Mr. Obama, both on immigration (they want legislation offering a path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants) and the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill to make organizing easier. In the July White House meeting, Mr. Obama made a strong pitch that health care should come first.
Labor leaders were willing to accept that strategy, said David E. Bonior, a former Michigan congressman who is the chairman of the National Labor Coordinating Committee, an umbrella group. But with Mr. Obama planning a major speech before Congress this week to lay out his priorities in a health bill, Mr. Bonior said, union members want reassurance that he will stick his neck out for their priorities.
"They don't want him to leave it up to seven or eight committee chairmen," Mr. Bonior said. "They want him to be the leader and to fight for this stuff."
29 Comments so far
Show AllThe public option is the sine qua non. Without it the insurers and pharms will continue to pursue their profits unabated.
Obama panders to Wall Street and FOX broadcasters, not to the people who elected him.
Obama effectively turned his back on workers when he reversed his campaign promise to reform NAFTA, took single-payer health care off the table, and used workers' taxes to bail out Wall Street while leaving Main Street to struggle.
Like every U.S. President, he is more beholden to his corporate contributors (in finance, war-profiteering, Big Coal & Oil, and the Medical-Industrial Complex) than to the citizens he supposedly represents.
The Labor Movement must return to being a workers' movement independent of any political party, so it can pressure all parties instead of being co-opted (and taken for granted) by the Democrats, who are merely one wing of the Corporate-War Party.
Looks like the Unions have more to worry about these days....recent poll's show they have lost the support of the Independents and many other Americans.
The unions lost their support a long time ago as soon as they resorted to trying to out-corporate the corporatists. People can bad mouth us Southerners as extremely anti-union but we can smell greedy bastards miles away. Today's unions are rife with corrupt leadership and the members are just as ripped off by their union leaders as they are by their employers. In most states, unions are nonexistent for the most part. That means you gotta rely on trial lawyers and most are greedy these days and thanks to that 2005 gag policy of shifting corporate wrongdoing cases to federal courts, it's all a lose-lose. Did you notice that in 2004 and 2008 most labor unions paid little attention to Gephardt and Kucinich but threw their support to corrupt centrists in the party? No wonder today's Unions are a complete laughing stock.
Yep and yes I did notice where they threw their support.
Well, there is the UE and the IWW. but little chance of something like them getting anywhere in Virgina.
This article lacks any real substance and it is a rather weak apology for Obama and the continual betrayal of labor unions, what's left of them, by the disingenuous Democratic Party.
Obama was put into power by the ruling-elite in order to serve their interests, not men and women who have to work for a living.
Does anyone wonder that when the Republicans are in power, there is no "bipartisan" (a loaded term) talk on the issues of the day, and the Repugs say, "take it or leave it," but as soon as the Dems regain the majority, they bend over backwards for "bipartisan support," meaning, "don't worry, we won't let you down!"
John Sweeney and Richard Trumka are "get along" types, not willing to rock the boat for the unionized workers they are supposed to represent. Top echelon union officials love to hobnob with the politicians and enjoy the photo ops, and Democratic politicians, for the most part, give pro-union (meaning pro-worker) speeches during campaign season, looking for contributions and volunteers for phone banking, precinct walking and such, and after the election, we are forgotten once more.
And Dennis Rivera of SEIU says "unions have to be flexible?" Is he for real?
I admonished the California Labor Federation for not endorsing Cindy Sheehan for Congress last year. They endorsed the treacherous Nancy Pelosi again, in spite of her being a Bush/Cheney supporter and enabler, with her infamous remark of, "impeachment's off the table." That was the "green light of approval" for the evil duo to continue on.
And EFCA, the Employee Free Choice Act, is also "off the table." Where are the Democrats and Mr. Obama on that one? And why aren't they pushing the Conyers bill, H.R. 676, the Democratic sponsored, "single payer" health care bill?
Trillions for the swindlers and shysters on Wall Street, trillions for murder and mayhem abroad, for imperialistic empire and for the malevolent psychopaths in the Pentagon, but for folks who do honest work, "sorry, we can't help you."
Education is the first step for working people. Social Studies and Labor History are not taught in schools anymore, so each person needs to learn on their own. The information is available.
What is the alternative? A return to serfdom. Authoritarian rule. Are we to become vassals like our ancestors?
The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO endorsed my awful Republican congressman, Tim Murphy, over a good, pro-labor, democratic challenger. Ostensibly this was because he had voted for the EFCA in the last Congress. But it strains belief that thy couldn't have seen this as just a cynical vote-getting maneuver on Murphy's part, as he knew the bill would die when the senate version failed. If a full-featured EFCA ever does come to a vote, Murphy will vote against it.
As all of us have known from a love affair of one kind or another, Labor "gave its love too lightly" to Obama and, as a result, there's a large amount of "labor's love lost." (apologies to W. Shakespeare).
I posted the above of what I thought was an original and cute formulation: "Labor's love lost." Then I googled and found a half dozen other "wits" who arrived at the formulation; did anyone copyright it? Good lesson for posters, including me: "google before you post," not afterwards, otherwise you'll be writing replies to yourself and as it was said in "You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running" (referring to masturbation): "not that it's wrong, it's just lonely."
Can we all say President Powell? I bet in 2012 we can. This is shaping up as 1952 all over again, with Colin Powell ready to play the starring role of a black Dwight D Eisenhower. A black Ike sounds pretty good to me. With Powell we might well get a national income policy, which Gerald Ford, a GOP president backed in his day but lacked Powell's prestige, authority, and popularity. On foreign policy, let's not forget it was Powell who opposed the Balkans misadventure under Bill Klanton and all the anything but humanitarian intervention that it brought with it.
AD
AD,
Not hardly Eisenhower, in any color. Powell was sent to investigate the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam, and was quick to cover it up. Three strikes against him right there!
He went before the United Nations, as a cheerleader for the Bush Crime Family's insistence on attacking Iraq, a nation which did nothing to us, and was willing to falsify information to initiate war crimes.
Colin Powell was a get along opportunist and lacks integrity and moral courage. As for Clinton's own war crimes in Yugoslavia, Powell, like other Republicans, opposed it because a Democrat wanted to attack another country for various reasons, not for humanitarian concerns.
Do you seriously think he would help labor unions, which this article is about?
Hey, we all know what a fraud Colin Powell is; but that's not the point. He has had a build up in the media which rivals Jesus Christ. If he is the candidate, he can split the Black vote and win the "patriot" vote. If the right wing crazies realize it is in their strategic interests to keep a low profile he could very well win, especially if Obama's first term turns into a fiasco, which appears increasingly likely. Obama's numbers are heading south and I don't see anything on the horizon that will reverse them. After all, the only thing that can turn him around would be if he delivers the goods and he has shown no inclination to do so.
Before you get too into promoting Colin Powell, you should learn a little more about him. The man is a power-hungry sycophant with no integrity. He is certainly no Dwight D Eisenhower. He is more like a black George W Bush.
Robert Parry's article, "Colin Powell and Lessons of My Lai," is a good place to start:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/23674
Unions shot themselves in the foot when they became part of the "establishment" (a la George Meaney and Jackie Presser) and strayed from their roots (forgot about organizing and remembering that big business is not their friend). The negative results of these strategic missteps are still extant. Until and unless labor begins to increase their numbers and avoids internal struggles based on personality (i.e., John Sweeney vs. Andy Stern), they will always be at a disadvantage.
Comments sections like this make me think the political Left is in as big a snit as the political Right these days.
Not that the comments here are in any way off color or inappropriate. On the contrary, they are all fine.
But I think most progressives are in a high dudgeon about Obama. We have, after all, been betrayed by our President and our party. If we were right-wingers, we'd be bursting into flames.
So why is our angst--as heartrending as anything the wingnuts can offer--going unsung?
Well...lefties just don't do tantrums as well as the Right. We don't freak out at public meetings or brandish our firearms quite as much as righties.
And the media love to report right-wing anger, but not left-wing anger. It may simply be too subtle for them, as left-wing anger doesn't express itself by inventing and repeating blatant lies, the weirder the better.
There's also cognitive dissonance. That's what the labor movement is feeling right now. This keeps progressives from commenting on their own state of mind. So you won't see it written up at HuffPo either.
And finally--when you get down to it, progressives are every bit as meek and mild as moderate Democrats. We quail at demanding Obama to deliver--just as our Congresspeople cower before the Repubs.
The result is that Obama's going down the tubes faster than you can say "Party unity my ass," but there is virtually no awareness in the larger society as to the left's key role in this implosion. Even folks like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann would clearly rather not talk about it. This is part of the weirdness of being a lefty today.
Speaking as a Second Amendment super-liberal, I take exception to your snipe about "brandishing firearms" "as much as righties." Maybe you are insecure when a black man legally carries a firearm openly; I am not. Maybe that's because I remember personally how black people were treated when only the Klan had guns, and how armed free black men accomplished in the South what no amount of nicey-nice northern liberal pacifism could ever do: smash the Klan in LA and MS.
Your rhetoric frames the Second Amendment as right wing just as conservatives frame the First Amendment as leftist. I invite you to open your eyes on this issue and quit demonizing everyone just because they carry different tools on their belt than you do.
American Gun Culture Report (for queers, anarchists, lefties, liberals, etc.)
http://www.americangunculturereport.com
But apart from that common progressive blinder that equates self-defense and resistance to tyranny with conservatives rather than revolutionaries...
...Are you inviting requiring "left" politics to stay stuck in the completely unproductive terrain of acting out? Are you normatizing the "right"'s way of operating? (The eternal shittfitt.)
I don't want my elected officials to "cower before" me. I just want them to represent me. I don't need to scream; I can sit with tension and disappointment. I don't need, or want, Rachel Maddow to cover that. I want her to cover the facts (for a change.)
Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are saying here, and if that's the case I apologize and hope you can help me understand better.
In my view the legacy of the 20th century was nothing but war, manipulation, emotion, acting out, and later in rich nations, people retreating from that in whatever way Feels Good. At some level our entire society is suffering from PTSD--two world wars, a global hemoclysm, epidemics, genocides, nuclear threat, pollution, the destruction of nature and rural communities........
Perry, I spent six years in a Ph.D. program being taught how to manipulate the masses through anger, tantrums, angst, fear, snit, and "bursting into flames."
Believe me, if you treasure intelligent, decent liberalism and progressivism in this nation, we all must realize that such negative use of energy undercuts liberal and progressive decency and hopes. The corporations who finance PR on the left and the right--and sometimes both--are COUNTING ON THAT. They want us all at each other's throats, while they go about business as usual.
Human nature seems to demand Thunderdomes. Isn't it time we evolved past that? Grown ups often experience betrayal in various relationships. That isn't cause for "bursting into flames." THAT is what we have to teach those in power. If we, ahem, stick to our guns, we will teach that. But it requires a much bigger taste for gravitas and patience than breaking windows and biting each others' fingers off. ;) I don't think "our angst is going unsung." But why on earth would we want a media spectacle to be made of our feelings in the first place?
As for "party unity" that only applies if you assume that everybody who voted for Obama did so out of that motive. That is, Democratic party unity. The Democrats don't constitute "my party." Most people I know who voted for Obama are independents, Greens, Republicans, perennial non voters, and libertarians.
Thanks for writing and for listening, Perry. Happy labor day.
Just wondering about, "Perry, I spent six years in a Ph.D. program being taught how to manipulate the masses through anger, tantrums, angst, fear, snit, and "bursting into flames."
This was for a Ph.D. in what? Thanks--I really would like to know.
All progressives need to move to california and kick everyone else out.
In my view, Mr. Obama is going way too fast with this thing. Not too slow.
One of the things community action organizers often learn is that the biggest roadblock to effective action, even on a topic important to everyone, is solution jumping, bickering, cutting deals, all in an effort to get things settled ASAP.
Molly Ivins liked to point out that democracy is messy and requires a certain relish for chaos. It is hard to contain the tension of such a process, it requires maturity, patience and forebearance.
That should be what Mr. Obama is doing: being the Mediator-in-Chief, with gravitas, patience, wisdom and mature humor. THAT is leadership. Not spouting platitudes from a position of staggering privilege and riches. Not spanking the opposition. Not pandering or capitulating to the basest forms of communicating and interacting.
I can understand why people are acting this way. It's as though, brutalized and abused by the Karl Rove (etc.) years, now that we're free of that we have to keep doing it because we got so used to it.
I can't believe, for instance, how progressives jump up to vent emotion (waste energy) on the crap that spews out of the facial tailpipes of RushBeckCoulter. I can't believe how many "progressives" and "liberals" are lending THEIR energy to that completely nonproductive way of interacting.
Don't we suspect that those with the most power--including those on Wall St. and in Big Insurance, Big Pharma, etc., to whom Mr. Obama ultimately answers--are counting on us to go for each others' throats like that, to act like a mob whose views can be dismissed, to use our precious limited energy in just that way?
They are the ones funding and pumping out consciousness engineers from the PR and marketing and communications and ad schools. All of those fields depend on one thing: manipulation of people to do the will of the powerful after you've whipped up their emotions and left them feeling mad, frightened and vulnerable. We’ve got to disengage from this abuse.
The time for Mr. Obama rushing is past. He could have gone to Nancy Pelosi the day after he was elected and said, "You will give me a national health care plan with the following features. Single payer and a public option will be two of the possibilities for how to accomplish them. You have six weeks to draft something, and then we will spend two years as a nation batting this around while we do other things as well. Get going, and if you come back with excuses, there's going to be hell to pay."
Instead, even with his ridiculous "office of the president elect" head start--NOTHING. In 10 months. Just rhetoric, platitudes and a laser focus on bailing out Wall Street and the big banditos who were holding the world's economy hostage with threats to bring it down.
And now an effort to hand over our lives to the insurance cartels for gods' sake! How can any progressive claim that it is a viable plan to give the insurance companies the ability to demand money from our wages and savings, with the IRS as the enforcers and jail time as the punishment? This is an appalling abuse, a chilling extension of corporate and governmental power over individual life and liberty. Is it any wonder conservative Americans are repelled and frightened?
"Just do something now" is not what we are asking for. We are asking for the health care that we are already paying for. There is still enough money to go around but sadly a huge percentage of it is systematically, deliberately squandered on fatcat price gouging and schemes which under Obamacare promises to grow even more frightening.
The Reaganoid movement toward making health care a commodity is POISON to this nation. So is the Obama-era effort to turn health care into the new economic bubble/savior...and to hand us over to corporations not only with a debt-slave ankle-chain of $12 trillion (at present), but now with our very lives and routine health care needs. Plus this will create a nationalized computer database of each and every person and their entire health history. (Integrated health care information management software and services is constantly touted in investment media as the next huge bubble industry.)
The only way "change" will happen is if things slow down, and we as a nation grow up out of the Endless Adolescent Idol-Worshipping Summer of the past 40 years. We have got to grow up and do the long-deferred work of learning to talk to each other civilly, forgive each other for past wrongs, pull together across party and philosophical lines.
I have been challenging myself by spending my social and recreational time with people of very different social, religious, and political beliefs than mine. It's been hard. It has awakened me to my own bigotries, challenged me to grow up and learn to communicate with more respect and listen more openly. None of that happens in a rush.
It is hard for me to stand with someone who believes that I don't deserve health care procedures that could save my life, because they personally disagree with those procedures. It is hard for me to stand with someone who doesn't respect me or the way I live or the things I believe. It is hard to put in the time and energy, whamming through all that with people who, formerly, I could just cut and run from. "Ew, Bushie bigot redneck idiots!"
Rushing health care will do nothing but hand it over quickly to our corporate masters who will use their fiscal salvation as our legally backstopped chains. We’ve got to slow down. And mobilize to sunset corporate charters and reclaim our power. See POCLAD.org
Tama Paine
Well said Tama Paine.
The previous eight years of government did indeed try to scare the s*** out of us. They succeeded then and they are trying to use the same fear to scare us again. The Economy won't be able to recover up to 2000 economic standards until the toxic assets are off of the Banks books.
The barn door does appear to be closing on the promise of heath care because the of the size of the pie that the government is dividing up. The amount in dollars is certainly producing a drunken behavior. I have no idea what 12 trillion dollars means, I thought that the number was a little lower, but the percentage of our Gross Domestic Product means more to me. It's supposed to be a number equal to about 7 - 10% of our GDP or about 10 trillion per year. 10% of our economy is obviously an incredibly large number to try to understand.
For over 30 years, the private industry of America has been the engine driving our economy, because of it's function to create real wealth instead of intangible, borrowed amounts. Now the private side of our economy wants to establish an ownership of our right to get health care. The question is being shaped to mean that industry has a right to sell us a national product, not a good product, not an economical product, just the right to sell us a product that we are going to be told to buy or make it illegal not to own.
The private corporations are pouring millions of dollars a day into the Congress to try and keep those reins of control wrapped as tight as they can legally get away with. The MSM have been reporting publicly about as much disinformation as they have reliable information. The public displays of fear about socialized medicine are finally beginning to be publicly accredited as a successful government program that already treats our armed services (national health care), and our elderly (Medicare/Medicaid).
In fact every trick in the private industry's lawyer arsenal is being used to scare Americans over and over again...Socialism...Death Panels...Nationalized health care for illegal immigrants...Women's Reproductive Rights. All of these issues have been talked about with differing opinions by our two national parties and until the committees vote and form a consensus to place into a bill are all very much up in the air.
Fairly good but did I detect some common contradictions in conservatism that you seem to be working through?
"Is it any wonder conservative Americans are repelled and frightened?"
According to this study, conservatives (like the ones that caused this fiasco in the first place,) live in fear:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/Conservatives_Deconstruct.html
to all of you who think that obama's going to help the
unions bend over and assume the position.he used the unions
just like clinton did and they gave him even more money
this time.these union leaders are slow learners at best and
everyone needs to understand that that you have to grow
your own.any major candidate that wins is so compromised
that they can't deliver to the general public after all
the money they took.lets hope it doesn't hurt too much.
The unions have bigger problems facing them. Obama has not to removed Bush and Cheney directives for a police state here and a pandemic "emergency" is set up to suspend the Constitution if it is declared with power going to the WHO (the pharmaceutical industry and Rockefellers control it and previously supported Hitler). It is a take over here with forced vaccinations using highly suspect vaccines and with forced detention in FEMA camps already sitting ready. NorthCom and Homeland Security are already on the ground with FEMA practicing martial law exercises. No one filed against NorthCom or complained that Obama let this happen.
Bush and Cheney's directive and orders to end the Constitution are treason.
A blank document from the Iowa Department of Public Health has been discovered online, designed to be filled in with the name of an H1N1 virus victim who is required to relocate from his or her home to a quarantine facility.
The form, which began appearing Aug 31 in e-mails and on the Internet, has concerned a confused public already swimming in conflicting reports about the severity of the swine flu and intrusive government measures that many fear may be taken if the disease becomes a pandemic.
The Iowa document, which WND confirmed with state officials is authentic, has done little to calm the public's fears.
"The Iowa Department of Public Health has determined that you have had contact with a person with Novel Influenza A H1N1," the form reads. "The Department has determined that it is necessary to quarantine your movement to a specific facility to prevent further spread of this disease.
"The Department has determined that quarantine in your home and other less restrictive alternatives are not acceptable," the document continues, before listing mandatory provisions of compliance with relocation to a quarantine facility.
Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, North Carolina (released a draft isolation order that would provide for imprisonment for up to two years and pretrial detention without bail for any citizen who fails to comply with an isolation order), Washington, have implemented legal actions in response to the H1N1 virus and governors and health commissioners in the following states have declared a state of emergency since April in California, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
There is rally in Massachusetts on the 12th to impeach a senator who helped draft the bill there to make it a police state. Will thousands go and expose Cheney, FEMA camps, military on the ground, Obama lying about mandatory vaccination not removing the order for martial law in an "emergency" be exposed? Will unions realize that what is at stake now is their lives and freedom not union rights or pay?
http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=518%3Arally-to-impeach-massachusettes-senator-over-plan-for-forced-vaccine-with-toxic-jabs-fines-and-quarantine&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=64&lang=en
When Play-boy Bubba Clinton was outsourcing our industrial base to China and other Foreign countries, the result was also the
loss of some 7 million jobs, while the Unions were standing
around with their fingers up their arse, wondering, What happened?
Obama will do to the unions what the Clintons and Walmart did. "Nothing". The Unions have surrendered to the Service Economy, selling out the working classes.
Unless the unions take some action to bring back our industrial base and rescue the working classes, we will continue on the road to the worst depression to ever hit this country.
Obama and his over-educated Ivy League Clowns, look at us as
un-educated dummies to be used and cast aside..
I just heard his latest brilliant speech. Talk is cheap.
It is not only the PACE of change, but the DIRECTION of policy change - it ramps up war and continues to transfer wealth and prerogative from the ordinary person to the super-rich.
Most unions have been soporific.
Joe