From the AFL-CIO

Citing Shared Values, AFL-CIO Unions Vote to Endorse Obama for Second Term


03/13/2012
Mike Hall


While President Obama has placed his faith in America’s working men and women to lead our country to economic recovery, Republican presidential candidates have pledged their loyalty to Wall Street and the 1%. Today the AFL-CIO General Board “voted proudly and enthusiastically” to endorse Obama for a second term.

Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a statement:
With our endorsement today, we affirm our faith in him—and pledge to work with him through the election and his second term to restore fairness, security and shared prosperity.

Trumka says the union movement agrees with the Republican hopefuls who say this election is about “values”—but there is quite a contrast between Obama’s values and those of his challengers.

President Obama honors the values of hard work, of mutual respect and of solving problems together—not every person for himself or herself. He believes that together we will get through the most challenging economic crisis in memory and restore opportunity for all. Each of the Republican presidential candidates, on the other hand, has pledged to uphold the special privileges of Wall Street and the 1%—privileges that have produced historic economic inequality and drowned out the voices of working people in America.

When Obama took office, says Trumka, the nation was on the brink of a second Great Depression and, over strenuous Republican opposition, he pressed Congress to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which saved or created 3.6 million jobs.

With the Affordable Care Act, which all Republican presidential candidates have vowed to overturn, Obama “set the nation on a path toward health security that had eluded our country for nearly 100 years.”

Trumka also says Obama’s push for Wall Street reform—passed, over the objection of almost every Republican:

Is now beginning to reverse decades of financial deregulation that put our entire economy at risk.

Click here for a detailed list of Obama’s accomplishments since he took office.

While the union movement “has sometimes differed with the president and often pushed his administration to do more and do it faster,” says Trumka, “we have never doubted his commitment to working families.”

He has worked hard to create good jobs; he has made the revival of the manufacturing sector a hallmark of his jobs agenda; he has moved aggressively to protect workers’ rights, pay and health and safety on the job; he has worked for a fair resolution of the housing crisis; and he put his confidence and administration unequivocally behind the workers and companies in the American auto industry—a move that saved hundreds of thousands of jobs and is helping to revive the economy now and for the future.

Calling the labor movement “the original social network—a working class social network,” Trumka says AFL-CIO unions will mobilize working people to come together to organize our neighborhoods door to door, powered by cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned energy.

We will be running an independent program rooted not in parties or candidates but in helping working people build power, making informed decisions about which candidates at every level to work for based on records and issues.

Several AFL-CIO unions previously voted to endorse President Obama, including AFSCME, AFT, CWA, IAM, IBB, LIUNA, UAand USW.

Citing Shared Values, AFL-CIO Unions Vote to Endorse Obama for Second Term