CWA 1180 - Political Action

AFL-CIO Head Says White Workers Need to Look Beyond Race

Daily Labor Report Banner
No. 127 Wednesday, July 2, 2008
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By Michelle Amber

LAS VEGAS

The labor movement needs to educate its members that if
they care about keeping their jobs, health care,
pensions, and creating good jobs, they should support
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill), the presumptive Democratic
candidate for president, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer
Richard Trumka said July 1.

"There is only one candidate... who is on their side...
and who has earned their votes and his name is Barack
Obama," Trumka said in a passionate address to the
international convention of the United Steelworkers.

Trumka said that "a lot of white folks...a lot of them
good union people, just can't get past this idea that
there is something wrong with voting for a black man."
Trumka received a standing ovation from the 3,000
delegates when he said, "those of us who know better
can't afford to look the other way." The labor movement
has a responsibility to challenge "racism" because "we
know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to
divide working people," he said.

Trumka made his remarks less than a week after the AFL-
CIO June 26 endorsed Obama and said it would launch its
biggest ever grassroots mobilization effort to educate
working families about Obama and the "anti-worker"
polices of his opponent Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) (124
DLR A-10, 6/27/08). a0b6t4d0d9

Obama Can Win Blue-Collar Vote on the Issues

Speaking about commentators, columnists, and
consultants in Washington, D.C., who ponder whether
Obama will win the votes of blue-collar workers in
states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and
Michigan, Trumka said, all Obama has to do is "speak
out about the issues that matter to working people."

What people are going to need to hear is that when it
comes to protecting jobs, pensions, and when it comes
to health care, child care, Social Security, and
Medicare, and "restoring the right of collective
bargaining," Obama has always been on labor's side and
has voted with labor 98 percent of the time, Trumka
said.

Noting that the same pundits had criticized Obama for
saying that "a lot of working people in this country
are angry," Trumka said it was "one of the most honest
things I've heard someone running for President say in
a long time. Hell yes, we're angry, and we have every
right."

He said that workers are losing their jobs, pensions,
and health care, and many are three or four paychecks
from being homeless. "None of this had to happen," he
said, but it did because there have been both
Republican and Democratic leaders whose economic agenda
was based on the assumption that policies that generate
profits for companies "somehow translate into shared
prosperity." He added that while those policies have
been good for Wall Street, "they've been a nightmare
for those of us who live on Main Street."

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