Union Bosses to Obama Aide: "This is a Defining Moment"
From 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."
"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."
posted by Trevor Loudon at
3/07/2011 03:18:00 PM
3 Comments:
This "defining moment" is not about "busting unions", but about dismantling communism.
Organized labor IS communism-"workers of the world-unite"; "DICTATORSHIP of the proletariat"; etc.
It was the American communist party that created the labor union movement and the DFL party in the US in 1924.
What we are seeing in Wisconsin is a taxpayer's revolt, the TRULY oppressed. (Maybe taxpayers need to be "unionized" to protect them against unions)
Nowhere has communism benifited the common man, it has impoverished and exploited him. Look at Cuba and North Korea as an example. Have we forgotten the specticle of the USSR?
Its interesting how the left continues to twist the facts even in the face of news that 100% refutes their allegations. Its not the unions that are being villified, its th eunions and their surrogates that are engaging in threats, intimidation, villifying to Republican legislators and leaders.
I couldn't agree more , this IS a defining moment and the unions are in full on panic mode .
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