President Obama Can Do So Much More For Labor Unions

[Omaha Steve]

http://nhlabornews.com/2013/02/president-obama-can-do-so-much-more-for-labor-unions/

By Bill Brickley | February 22, 2013 | Labor

President Obama followed up his omission of labor unions during his Inaugural Address by doing the same at his State of The Union speech.Senator Tom Harkin, a long time advocate of working people summed up the feelings of many in the labor movement during an interview with “The Hill”.

“Not one word in there about, if you want to rebuild the middle class, you’ve got to make it easier and better for people to organize and bargain collectively for their wages and for their conditions of their employment,” Harkin continued. “Not one word about that. And to me, that is the crux of their problem — is that people don’t have any power. They don’t have any power when they’re out there on the job. And you’ve got to have a balance. You’ve got to give workers more of a power to be able to bargain for things like their wages, for pensions, for family and medical leave, and paid sick leave and things like that.

“People just are powerless, and so I was just kind of upset and really saddened that he didn’t even give a nod to labor unions.”

“And you know what?” Harkin added. “He wouldn’t be there without labor unions, and neither would half of our Democrats in the Senate, I’ll tell you that.”

FULL story at link.

About Bill Brickley
Bill is a member of the National Association of Letter Carriers, serving on the NH Letter Carrier Executive Board as CD1 Legislative Liaison. Also serves on the NH AFL-CIO Executive Board. Former NH Area Coordinator Amnesty International and NH Labor News Blogger Follow him on twitter @BillBrickley

[mattclearing]

1. K&R. n/t

[el_bryanto]

2. Obama is clearly better than Republicans/Romney - but he's a corporate liberal

And corporations just don't cotton to Labor Unions. Corporate liberals (like FDR) believe the way to protect workers is through regulation, not negotiation.

Instead of Corporate maybe I should say Paternalistic Liberals? At any rate, Workers can't actually be expected to know what is best for them.

Bryant

[Smll_Ax3]

4. not sure FDR was so much a corporatist

what makes you think he sided with corporations more than workers?

[el_bryanto]

6. That's why i think paternalistic maybe works better

In modern parlance Corporate works better, and Obama clearly feels an affinity for corporate leaders. In the 1930s the dynamic was different; but I think that FDR was still basically distrustful of labor unions. That is part of the reason we got some stronger working regulations and particularly social security.

While Social Security is a good program, cutting across all people, part of me does wonder if things might have been better if Unions had negotiated pensions rather than setting up a federal program. By giving workers much of what they wanted by Congressional decree, FDR (and congress) took the wind out of the unions. Why worry about the union protecting you, when the Federal Government is doing it?

And FDR was born into a class system; while he clearly had sympathy for the poor, I don't know that he believed they actually knew how to take care of themselves. Rather I think he felt like it was up to people of his class to take care of the poor and the underclass.

Bryant

[Omaha Steve]

9. FDR labor quote

[Kingofalldems]

3. Kick and Rec for unions everywhere

[forestpath]

5. Very telling.

[bvar22]

7. Hey...Campaign Season is OVER.

What did you expect?





You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their rhetoric, promises, or excuses.
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[MichiganVote]

8. Obama has -0- interest in labor, esp. unions.