Hands off the UAW : The Nation: don't let them bankrupt the Big Three to break the Union

[amborin]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot Moderator Democratic Uderground)


by John Nichols:

"Before there was talk of a "transformational presidency," Barack Obama needed a transformational moment. It came in February at a sprawling General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, where the Illinois senator--trailed by a press corps skeptical about his ability to appeal to white union members--electrified thousands of autoworkers with a populist promise of infrastructure investment, new trade policies and a future for American manufacturing.

His pre-Wisconsin primary vow to defend auto plants offered a lifeline to workers who knew that their industry--battered by years of bad CEO decisions, shortsighted federal energy policies and dysfunctional trade deals--was teetering on the brink of the disaster that unfolded as the year progressed. Days after Obama spoke to them, the autoworkers of Janesville voted in overwhelming numbers to make him the Democratic presidential nominee.

It was a critical moment for the candidate, one that he would refer to repeatedly as the campaign progressed toward the November 4 election. Obama and his aides, taking counsel from Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, had picked the right room in the house of labor in which to make their move.


If he keeps his promises to autoworkers, Obama has the chance to renew the ability of organzed labor to improve the lot of union and non-union workers in the twenty-first century.

Seventy-three years earlier, United Auto Workers Federal Labor Union No. 19324 met near the plant where Obama spoke, forming a piece of the quilt of local unions that would become the nation's most powerful industrial organization. Today Janesville's UAW members, like their more than 1 million brothers and sisters nationwide, are members of a union that has for decades pushed the labor movement, the Democratic Party and the government to cross lines of racial and regional division in pursuit of social justice, sound yet humane economic principles and international solidarity.

<snip>

<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/nichols?rel=hp_picks>

[Raksha]

1. Looks like I hesitated just a few seconds too long...

okay, happy to be the SECOND person to recommnend!

[boomerbust]

2. Well Said

<<<<<<<

[BR_Parkway]

3. and then there were 3 - K&R

[amborin]

4. hope people see this; the UAW is on the line