Obama's Wisconsin remarks ease labor's doubts
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A prominent union official in Washington says he's often wondered how President Barack Obama would answer the old organizing song, "Which Side Are You On?" -- until Obama weighed in on the Wisconsin labor war this week.
Obama's strongly-worded opposition to GOP plans to repeal the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin public state employees, which he termed an "assault" on workers' rights, has gone a long way towards repairing the relationship between the president and his union allies after two years of mutual disappointment and friction.
But Obama, ever seeking the center, was careful to limit his criticism to Republican Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to roll back collective bargaining rights, and not Walker's attempt to plug his state's budget gap by forcing employees to pick up a greater share of the pension and health insurance costs.
"The president has been accused of watching situations to see how they develop so I think the fact that he issued a clear, clean, quick statement was critical for the relationship. It helps enormously," said former SEIU president Andy Stern, a key Obama labor ally who served on his deficit commission.
"But he's trying to walk the appropriate line here too??? We all clearly need to recognize that the states these battles are going to take place in are critical states for the president and other Democrats in 2012," he added.
Republicans tried to blur that line on Friday, arguing that Obama is sticking his nose into a state's fiscal matters, while burdening local governments with onerous health reform mandates.
The White House spent much of the day counterpunching.
"He is very understanding of the need for state governments, governors, state legislatures to reduce spending, to make tough choices, to be fiscally responsible," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Portland, Ore.
"But he also feels very strongly that we need not to make this an assault on the collective bargaining rights of workers in a given state. Public service workers need to make sacrifices just like everyone else, but there's a distinction here that he sees. And I just want to make sure that people see that he was very clear about his recognition that states need to deal with their budgets just like the federal government needs to deal with its budget."
First Published February 19, 2011 12:00 am
