Obama: "I will not take money from "corporate lobbyists"!

[Tigermike 3,425]

Obama: "I will not take money from "corporate lobbyists"!

But he's sure hip deep in union money

"We're ready to play offense for organized labor. It's time we had a president who didn't choke saying the word 'union.' A president who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best: organize our workers," Mr. Obama told the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia on April 2.

"I will make it the law of the land when I'm president of the United States," Mr. Obama told the labor federation.

Obama loves to claim he doesn't take money from "corporate lobbyists", he's hip deep in union money. And if you don't think they expect some real pay back when the election is over, then you don't know unions very well.

And what is it they want? The right to legally intimidate as they attempt to organize:

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Obama supports union organizing

Donald Lambro (Contact)

Legislation that would make it more difficult for workers to hold a private ballot vote in unionization drives, which critics say would lead to harassment and intimidation, has spurred a pitched battle between powerful labor unions supportive of Sen. Barack Obama and big business in the presidential campaign.

Seen by the AFL-CIO as a way to boost union rolls by hundreds of thousands of new members, the hotly-contested bill has become this year's No. 1 election issue for organized labor. Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has promised union bosses that the Employee Free Choice Act will become law in 2009 if he wins the presidency in November.

"We're ready to play offense for organized labor. It's time we had a president who didn't choke saying the word 'union.' A president who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best: organize our workers," Mr. Obama told the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia on April 2.

"I will make it the law of the land when I'm president of the United States," Mr. Obama told the labor federation.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, a staunch opponent of the bill, has said it would deny a democratic right of workers to decide by secret ballot whether they will come under union representation or not.

The bill is "a poorly-disguised attempt by the labor unions to swell their ranks at the expense of workers' rights and employers. John McCain strongly opposes the efforts of the labor unions to strip working Americans of their right to a private ballot in deciding whether or not to organize as a union," the McCain campaign said.

The AFL-CIO announced Tuesday that it was starting "a ramped-up campaign" to make Mr. Obama's campaign pledge a political reality, beginning this week with a massive mailing to more than 600,000 swing union households in the battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

That will be followed by a "massive campaign" among 13 million union voters in August to promote Mr. Obama and specifically highlight his support for the labor law reform bill known as "card check." It is estimated that organized labor will spend upward of $300 million in this year's presidential and congressional elections - much of it promoting the card-check bill and tying it to its Democratic supporters.

The AFL-CIO's campaign Web site features numerous quotes from Mr. Obama pledging to pass the card-check bill that would allow workers to form a union simply by collecting a majority of cards signed by workers supporting the unionization of their employer's business.

Under current law, once a majority of workers submit cards requesting union certification, an election is held in which workers vote by secret ballot on whether to ratify unionization. The pending bill, called the Employee Free Choice Act, does not require the secret ballot vote unless at least 30 percent of workers call for it.

The Obama campaign says the card-check bill will not necessarily deny workers the right to a private ballot.

"This is simply a debate over process. But it is up to the workers, and they should be free to choose their process," said campaign spokesman Nick Shapiro. "If they wish to vote by secret ballot instead of a card-check process, they can. The law does not strip them of that right."

But Mr. Obama is quoted in the AFL-CIO campaign Web site flatly saying the proposed law "will allow workers to form a union through majority sign-up and card-checks and strengthen penalties for those employers who are in violation" - thus bypassing the ballot procedure. Union leaders have said they prefer this to an open election in which employers and unions compete for worker votes.

The House passed the card-check bill last year by a 241-185 vote, but it was blocked in the Senate where Democrats fell nine votes short of the 60 votes needed to end a GOP filibuster

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobby, announced it was launching the Workforce Freedom Initiative, a counteroffensive against the AFL-CIO's efforts to "take away the protection of a private ballot, giving union organizers free rein to publicly pressure workers into signing cards stating support for a union. This is un-American," said Chamber President Tom Donohue.

The Chamber will mount a "multimillion-dollar effort [to] galvanize small-business owners, workers, community leaders and citizens to preserve the rights and freedoms of Americans in the workplace," Mr. Donohue said.

"The obvious intention and design of the bill is to eliminate private ballots as the primary means of certifying unions in this country," said Steven Law, the Chamber's chief counsel.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/j...ganizing/print/

The private ballot is an absolute necessity for fair elections and anyone with the IQ of a three day old halibut knows that. Unions will spend upwards of $300 million during this campaign season to elect someone who will sign legislation eliminating that obvious safeguard and toss it off to 'an argument over process'. And he will also repeatedly remind you he is in nobody's pocket when he does so.

Thanks Mc

[MDM4AU 337]

In all seriousness, someone please explain to me why "public" ballots should be used. I have never understood why anyone without an agenda would be against secret ballots.

Maybe I just don't understand how it all works...

[BamaGrad03 0]

The dem supporters on this board were very quiet last time this topic came up.

I honestly think it's another one of those "we support it because the democrats at the top support it"...

The only people it is good for are the unions themselves. And then when they drive the plant into the ground and are out of a job...they no longer benefit either.

[au9596 0]

Exactly BamaGrad.

The unions are useless. They used to be justified before the basic labor laws of our nation were passed. Now the way laws are written are all in the unions favor. It is ridiculous!! All union leaders are thiefs and the same person they claim they want to help is their "victim".

[Tigermike 3,425]

I have talked to quite a few union men & women across the country. They have mixed feelings about this. On one hand unions have helped workers across the country. On the other hand taking away secret ballots opens up the specter of strong arm tactics from unions, union organizers and management.

Here is how one "big" union man answered me about this.

JJ one of the greatest freedoms an American has is the freedom to vote. I firmly believe that an individual should have the right to organize, so many companies have a strangle hold on employees in todays economy. Unions have made it better for everyone in the work place with healthcare, retirement, and paid vacations. Even nonunion plants benefit from union benefits, they give benefits to employees to keep unions out. So there is a checks and balance system in the work place. If there was no unions we would not have what we have now, we would not have the pay scale we have. We would be like a lot of the 3rd world nations. You can not say union wages drive companies out of the us, greed drives them to China and Mexico, If the the jobs are going to Mexico why are the mexicans coming here? Give an employee the freedom to vote yes or no without any coercion from either side.