In what is being reported as a surprise move, the 40,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) announced that they have formally ended their association with the AFL-CIO, one of the nation's largest private sector unions. The Longshoremen citied Obamacare and immigration reform as two important causes of their disaffiliation.
In an August 29 letter to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, ILWU President Robert McEllrath cited quite a list of grievances as reasons for the disillusion of their affiliation, but prominent among them was the AFL-CIO's support of Obamare.
"We feel the Federation has done a great disservice to the labor movement and all working people by going along to get along," McEllrath wrote in the letter to Trumka.
The ILWU President made it clear they are for a single-payer, nationalized healthcare policy and are upset with the AFL-CIO for going along with Obama on the confiscatory tax on their "Cadillac" healthcare plan.
The Longshoreman leader said, "President Obama ran on a platform that he would not tax medical plans and at the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention, you stated that labor would not stand for a tax on our benefits." But, regardless of that promise, the President has pushed for just such a tax and Trumka and the AFL-CIO bowed to political pressure lining up behind Obama's tax on those plans.
McEllrath also went on to say that they support stronger immigration reform than the AFL-CIO is supporting.
One ILWU committeeman was even harsher on both the AFL-CIO and the President. ILWU Coast Committeeman Leal Sundet criticized the AFL-CIO telling LaborNotes.comthat Trumka was marching "in lockstep" with Obama both on the "Cadillac healthcare tax" as well as immigration.
Sundet slammed Obama's immigration plan saying it is "designed to give [only] highly-paid workers a real path to citizenship."
Private sector unions have fallen to an all time low participation rate in the US workforce. Unionized workers now account for only 11.3 percent of the US workforce.
I read this today.
ReplyDeleteSo who is the fool here?
No one but no one can trust anyone in the Obama administration and that includes their supporters.
As for the Unions,they have had it their way too long.
The Unions have told too many lies and made and broke too many promises of their own along the way and now they are paying the price.TFB!
Christie peels off union endorsements from Democratic rival Buono
ReplyDeleteMuch has been made, particularly by Christie’s campaign, about the support he has received from building-trades unions in his re-election bid — proof, he suggests, of a new formula for success for Republicans by poaching from traditionally Democratic labor support.
Ray Pocino, vice president and Eastern regional manager for the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which endorsed Christie in December to make “a statement, loud and clear,” questions the accuracy, or at least the context, of reports about Christie’s remarks in Boston.
“I’ve talked to him personally, I know that he believes in unions, and I know that he’s not anti-union,” Pocino said. “He believes in collective bargaining for the public sector and the private sector. It’s just that he believes that bargaining is done from both sides of the table and is based on what it is that you can afford to do.”
Kevin Roberts, Christie’s campaign manager, said the rift between private-sector and public-sector unions established itself, in New Jersey and elsewhere, when job stability and quality of benefits fell out of balance between the public and private sectors. Christie simply made the case that public-sector unions were wrong for not agreeing to concessions, he said.
“It’s far less of a strategy than it is a reality of what’s on the ground,” Roberts said. “Folks in the building trades and private-sector unions, they happen to be in agreement with the governor. That’s not something that’s by design. That’s something that’s a matter of math and where we’re positioned on the issues.”
“We understand that when the governor negotiates with them, he’s the employer. I’d look at a governor funny that just sort of rolls over and capitulates and gives the public-sector unions every single thing they ask for,” said Delle Cava, the IBEW official.
Delle Cava, the local’s business manager, said unemployment among his union’s 3,500 electricians peaked at 850, but is now under 400 for the first time in six years. His members will work 4.5 million man-hours this year — still down from 6.5 million in 2001, but 50 percent higher than the 3 million worked in 2009.
Credit for that million and a half hours of work, he said, goes to Gov. Chris Christie.
“It was an easy call,” Delle Cava said. “Our men love him.”
Seems no one trusts the Obama administration.
Deletelulz ... weekend LA fund raiser in front of AFL-CIO cancelled, purportedly cuz of Syria.
ReplyDeleteYea, ok ... more like with a 40K member loss they'd run him outta town on a rail.