Posted on 03/06/2011 6:28:53 PM PST by Nachum
rom the Communist Party USA's Peoples World
"AFL-CIO leaders have told a top aide to Democratic President Barack Obama that the current fight in states over workers' rights is "a defining moment" Obama must use to discuss the future of the country and of workers.
Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger delivered that message to Obama senior advisor David Plouffe during a March 1 "working lunch" at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Washington.
Over sandwiches, potato chips, soda and coffee, toted into the council's meeting room, the union leaders told Plouffe that insistent demands by Govs. Scott Walker, R-Wis., and John Kasich, R-Ohio, to eliminate collective bargaining for state and local workers are similar to Ronald Reagan's firing of the Air Traffic Controllers 30 years ago.
But while Reagan used PATCO's strike - over unsafe conditions - as "a signal that union-busting was fine," Obama "stepped up to the plate with the governors" for union workers, Schaitberger said.
The council told Plouffe to thank Obama for that support, voiced publicly before the governors - minus Walker - and to urge him to continue it. Plouffe promised he would take that message back to the Oval Office.
"I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are derogated or vilified and their rights infringed upon," Obama declared on Feb. 28. "We need to attract the best and the brightest to public service." It was Obama's second highly publicized pro-worker, pro-union statement since the struggle with Walker began."
(Excerpt) Read more at newzeal.blogspot.com ...
“Union Bosses to Obama Aide: “This is a Defining Moment””
I definitely agree with that - it’s a defining moment for us as well. If they get the republicans to cave in wisconsin, they will use this model everywhere else and essentially annul our election victories.
If that happens, future elections will have consequences for us, but not them.
“... attract the biggest and widest” looks like. Whoah that’s a lot of union worker; a LOT.
“A defining moment, and the unions and Obama are both going to lose and be defined by it.”
I’d like to believe that, but I sense that the Republicans are going to somehow get snookered by the ‘rats, and that the results of what’s going on in Wisconsin, Ohio, and a few other places isn’t going to be what we had hoped, once the dust settles down.
Just sayin’....
Pres. Reagan was dealing, as was right and proper, with federal employees and federal government “benefits.”
Obummer is being urged to meddle further in a state government matter, absent any authority to do so other than demands of his union masters and financiers.
the Bushes have ruined this country
This is a donk meme that I have heard separately from many disparate sources over the past 2 years. It is especially prevalent from those with union connections.
Why don’t they wait for May Day (e.g., the old Soviet Union one).
Definitely. The guy I heard say it is from an old-line union background.
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