BARACK OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT

Friday, October 24, 2008

(PAI)

WASHINGTON WINDOW

October 24, 2008

In its 55 years as the leading weekly independent news service for unions, their members and their media, Press Associates Union News Service has never endorsed a political candidate. Until now.

We have been critical of politicians of both parties who are anti-worker, but as a professional voice for workers, we decided not to endorse any one individual. Like many unionists, we believe labor should have "no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests." And we have been critical of policies, regardless of who pushed them, that hurt workers.

But we are coming to the end of the most venal, vicious, anti-labor hate-filled reign of a U.S. president since the Gilded Age, if not before, of Republican George W. Bush. Bush will finally, and for once, obey the U.S. Constitution by leaving office as scheduled on Jan. 20, 2009. His party’s anointed nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, promises more of the same in policies, if not in the outright hate.

By contrast, in Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, we have the most pro-worker presidential nominee, based on his past track record, since 1968, when the late Hubert Humphrey was running to succeed Lyndon Johnson.

On workers’ issues from A to Z, Barack Obama is with us, and John McCain is not. The evidence is overwhelming, but some examples will suffice:

* Obama strongly supports the Employee Free Choice Act, designed to level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining. It would impose hefty fines for labor law-breaking, make it easier to get court injunctions against

employers who break the law and order mandatory arbitration if unions and bosses do not agree on a first contract within 120 days of starting bargaining.

Most importantly, the Employee Free Choice Act would write into law the 45-year-old option workers now have for card-check recognition of unions in the workplace, if a majority of covered workers signs National Labor Relations Board election authorization cards. However, that occurs only if the employer agrees.

Legalizing card check recognition would remove the employer’s right to deprive workers of that route to unionization. Card check would be up to the workers. It would short-circuit employers’ venal, vicious and illegal anti-union campaigning. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, elections are still an option, when workers agree to them.

Obama voted to stop the GOP filibuster that killed the Employee Free Choice Act. McCain voted for the filibuster -- and now denounces the act, though not by name, on the campaign trail. He also lies about it. So do his backers. Don’t believe them.

* Just over a decade ago, McCain strongly supported a national "right-to-work" law, a favorite cause of the Radical Right that backs Bush and McCain. By contrast, while a state senator, Obama strongly supported an Illinois bill outlawing use of "striker replacements," or scabs. The Democratic platform also supports outlawing scabs.

The national right-to-work law, thankfully, went nowhere. The Illinois anti-scab law Obama backed, was passed, signed -- and bounced by the state Supreme Court.

* The GOP-named majority on the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to deny Lilly Ledbetter, and other female workers, the right to sue their employers for pay discrimination based on sex, except during their first 180 days on the job.

The House approved legislation overturning the court’s Ledbetter ruling. Please note the 180-day limit applies not just to discrimination based on sex, but also pay discrimination based on other factors, including race.

The Senate GOP again sustained a filibuster and killed the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. Obama, in a tight primary campaign, took time out to fly back to Washington to vote for the equal pay bill. McCain missed the vote, but later said he opposes the bill because women, don’t have the "education and experience" for equal pay.

* Obama has promised future trade pacts will include enforceable workers’ rights in their texts. That will help workers by removing much of the incentive for rapacious corporations to close profitable plants in the U.S. and reopen them in developing nations. Obama promised to sit down with the Canadian prime minister and the Mexican president to renegotiate the model for those job-destroying pacts, NAFTA.

McCain voted for every job-losing trade pact. He took time out from his campaign to travel to Mexico to champion NAFTA, and to Colombia, which has had a record 2,550+ unionists assassinated in the last decade-plus -- some at the behest of U.S.-based multinationals -- to endorse the U.S.-Colombia "free trade" agreement.

So for all those reasons, and more, including his plans to help workers hurt by the suffering economy, Press Associates Union News Service -- like Obama’s hometown staunchly Republican paper, The Chicago Tribune -- now breaks with its tradition to endorse Barack Obama for the presidency of the United States. ###