Unions Plan Political Work Despite Strained Relations With Obama

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5647/unions_plan_political_work_espite_strained_relations_with_obama/

Thursday March 4 10:17 am

By David Moberg

After President Obama earlier this week supported the mass firing of 93 teachers and other staff at the troubled Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, the AFL-CIO executive council, already meeting in Orlando, fired off an unusually harsh resolution.

Labor leaders said they were “appalled” by the “unacceptable” and “disappointing” presidential statements, especially since the local superintendent fired the teachers rather than negotiate over how to continue the recent academic improvement at the working-class community’s school.


President Barack Obama leans backward as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel speaks during a National Economic Council and Domestic Policy Council planning meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Feb. 11, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)


It was a mini-PATCO moment–echoing faintly President Reagan’s decision to fire striking air traffic controllers—in the increasingly frayed relations between organized labor and a president who has at times seemed distant from the labor movement, yet at other times seemed more pro-union than any president in many decades.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said Obama’s comment was “a bad call” based on “wrong facts,” but that it happened at all caused him “concern, deep concern.”

Union reaction to the administration is increasingly ambivalent. Partly it reflects frustration–mainly in not getting adequate legislation passed to deal with the multiple crises of working Americans (jobs, incomes, health care, worker rights and more).

But that unease is tempered by satisfaction–mainly in administrative actions.

FULL story at link.