Obama Tells Union Leaders: “You Have a Place at the Table”

Monday, March 30, 2009

UCS News Service - President Barack Obama told the nation’s labor leaders in March that while the Bush administration had tried to undermine organized labor, the union movement would always have a “place at the table” under his presidency. “We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests,” Obama said in a video address to the executive board of the AFL-CIO, meeting in Miami. Obama said there could not be a strong middle class, the focus of his economic recovery plan, without a strong labor movement. He repeated his support for labor’s top legislative priority, the Employee Free Choice Act, and reminded union leaders he had acted swiftly to start reversing some of the Bush Administration’s harshest anti-labor policies. “We’ve overturned the previous administration’s executive orders which were designed not only to undermine critical government work but to undermine organized labor,” Obama said. Within days of taking office on January 20, the new president signed three orders helpful to unions and workers’ rights:
- Preventing taxpayers funds from being used to reimburse federal contractors who spend money to impede workers from organizing.
- Requiring federal contractors to inform employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act;
- Helping qualified workers keep their jobs even when a federal contract changed hands.