Santorum is big labor? Pa. union leaders say 'ridiculous' [View all]

[tosh]

Santorum is big labor? Pa. union leaders say 'ridiculous'

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-santorum-is-big-labor-pa-union-leaders-say-ridiculous-20120217,0,2670127.story

By Colby Itkowtiz
The Morning Call
3:41 PM PST, February 17, 2012

As Rick Santorum's poll numbers rise, so do the Mitt Romney attacks. This week the Romney campaign, directly and through surrogates, have attacked Rick Santorum as “big labor’s favorite senator.”

But that’s not how Pennsylvania labor leaders remember their former senator.

Aside from votes here and there, they remember a man who was hostile to unions and received a career average of just 12 percent from the AFL-CIO for votes he cast from 1995 to 2006. Three of those years he received a zero on the labor lobby’s scorecard.

Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, remembered trying to schedule meetings with Santorum, but always being passed over to his staff. After appealing to the Republican Senator’s aides on the labor issue of the day, Bloomingdale said his office would receive a letter stating the senator “was opposing you on whatever that issue was.”

<snip>