by Mike Hall, Aug 29, 2007

Some 600 local and national Machinists (IAM) officers and leaders heard from a quartet of presidential candidates at the union’s annual planning meeting this week in Orlando, Fla.

On Monday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) addressed the union members. Yesterday, former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) took the podium.

At the planning meeting, dubbed “Conversation with the Candidates,” the four answered questions submitted by union members and from moderator Erin Moriarty of CBS News. Topics covered trade issues, health care, workers’ rights, the growing wage gap and more.

As IAM President Thomas Buffenbarger said:

These issues are too important and too complicated for 30-second sound bites. This format is designed to allow for a substantive discussion so we can truly gauge the depth of each candidate’s knowledge and understanding of these issues.

Union members and others who didn’t make it to Florida can take a look at the candidate’s presentations at IAM’s special “Conversation with the Candidates” website.

Edwards told union leaders:

We will not continue to have a strong middle class in this country unless we strengthen and grow the organized labor movement.

Kucinich said he would restrict certain types of federal grants to states that ban union security clauses, so-called “right to work” for less states and would

Make the basis of government in the United States of America the rights of workers….Unequivocally, no apologies, a workers’ White House.

On Monday, Clinton said the years of Bush administration domestic and foreign policy have driven Americans to the “brink” of disaster:

We need to make a change now so we can ensure every single American has a good job, quality health care, pension security and we need to get back to the point where workers can freely form a union.

Huckabee, the only Republican to accept the IAM’s invitation, stressed the need to revive U.S. manufacturing.

In order for this country to be free there are three things we must do: feed ourselves, fuel ourselves and fight for ourselves. That means we need to be manufacturing our own means of defense and making it a national security issue.

Unions are looking closely at all the candidates. Earlier this month some 18,000 union members took part in the AFL-CIO Presidential Candidates Forum in Chicago. The Fire Fighters, AFSCME, the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, AFT, Communications Workers of America, United Steelworkers and several other unions have held candidate forums. Several individual candidates spoke to union members at a series of AFL-CIO town hall meetings in the spring.

For more information on the candidates, be sure to visit the AFL-CIO Working Families Vote 2008 website.

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