“I’ll place my bet on the American worker any day of the week”
Yesterday, Richard L. Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, sent out this statement:
This afternoon, the AFL-CIO’s General Board voted unanimously to endorse President Obama for re-election.For many reasons, we are pledging to work with President Obama throughout the elections and in a second term. The bottom line is this: As president, Barack Obama has placed his faith in America’s working men and women to lead our country to economic recovery and our full potential. So we’re putting our faith in him.
Although the labor movement has sometimes differed with the president and often pushed his administration to do more—and do it faster—we have never doubted his commitment to a strong future for working families. With our endorsement today, we affirm our faith in the president. We pledge to work with him through the election and his second term to restore fairness, security and shared prosperity.
Brothers and sisters, the coming election is a choice about values. President Obama honors the values of hard work, mutual respect and of solving problems together—not every person for himself or herself. Each of the Republican presidential candidates, on the other hand, has pledged to uphold the special privileges of Wall Street and the 1%—privileges that have produced historic economic inequality and drowned out the voices of working people in America.
Working people are the Davids standing up to Goliath in today’s politics. Our strength is in our numbers, our values and plain, hard work. When we come together, we are formidable. And for this election, we are coming together like never before.
Here are some key reasons we support the president’s re-election:
- He took America from the brink of a second Great Depression by pressing Congress to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which saved or created 3.6 million jobs.
- He championed comprehensive health insurance reform, which—while far from perfect—set the nation on a path toward the health security that had eluded our country for nearly 100 years.
- He insisted upon Wall Street reform—passed over the objection of almost every Republican. Now, we can finally begin to reverse decades of financial deregulation that put our entire economy at risk.
Of course, it’s not surprising that the labor movement is getting behind President Obama. They know there is an attack on organized labor and collective bargaining rights in nearly every state. They know who is supporting them and who isn’t.
Here’s the scene on Labor Day in Detroit last year (interactive panoramic image, use your mouse to move around, you can also zoom in & out and go full screen):
[Panoramic image credit: Anne C. Savage, used with permission]
More fantastic images from that day can be found HERE.
Here’s a collection of things that President Obama has said during his first term about his position on unionized Americans:
Meanwhile, from the awesome site keepingGOPhonest.com, five ways the (former?) GOP front-runner, Mitt Romney, hates on labor:
Are you in? Are you fired up and ready to go?
