Obama is either so beholden to Organized Labor that he just can’t get out, or he simply isn’t smart enough to understand the enormous drain that unions have on this economy and how they contribute to our inability to compete in the world market…like say, the Detroit automakers.
I’m giving him credit (at least for now) for being a smart guy, so it must be the former.
By PHILIP ELLIOTT | Associated Press Writer 7:32 AM EST, January 30, 2009
*WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is playing to one of the *Democratic Party’s most reliable constituencies — organized labor — reversing a number of his predecessor’s executive orders that critics regard as anti-union.
Labor leaders were to visit the White House* for a second consecutive day Friday, where, a union official said, Obama was to abolish four Bush-era directives that unions opposed and then reintroduce Vice President *Joe Biden’s task force focused on the middle class.
Both were meant as a way for the new administration to connect with workers at the end of a week that has seen U.S. companies announce thousands more jobs cuts.
“Over the last 100 years the middle class was built on the back of organized labor. Without their weight, heft and their insistence starting in the early 1900s we wouldn’t have the middle class we have now, in my view,” Biden told CNBC on Thursday. “So I think labor getting a fair share of the pie is part of it.”
*Among the George W. Bush-era executive orders that Obama was to reverse was one that allowed unionized companies to post signs informing workers that they are allowed to decertify their union. Critics claimed it was unfair because nonunion businesses are not **required *to post signs letting workers know they are legally allowed to vote for a union.
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I particularly like the argument that the current order was unfair because it allowed companies to do one thing without *requiring *that they do another.
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