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Pennsylvania Union Members: McCain Has Supported Every Bad Trade Deal |
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Lenny Sapozhnikov, AFL-CIO deputy state director for Pennsylvania, sends us this report from the field.
Union leaders and members came out in droves in recent days to mark Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s arrival in Pennsylvania and draw the public’s attention to his record of voting against the labor movement and against the middle class.
Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President William George unveiled the campaign on a media call with several radio stations on Thursday.
John McCain’s voting record is 88 percent of the time he’s voted with George Bush. Pennsylvania, since the beginning of NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], has lost 1.2 million jobs and in the last six years, we’ve lost over 220,000 jobs in the state of Pennsylvania to these bad trade policies.
Pete Wingerter, a member of the Chocolate Workers (Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 464) in Hershey, said, “Too many American families have lost their jobs” because of McCain’s voting record.
I can only imagine the travesty these people must experience losing their jobs and having responsibilities such as paying a mortgage and educating their children.
Some 300 Hershey workers are losing their jobs, which are going to Mexico, this month.
On Friday, more than 40 union leaders and members from AFSCME, Electrical Workers (IBEW), SEIU, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and Working America greeted McCain outside the Springfield Country Club. Steve Sarno, president of IBEW Local 126 and chairman of the Southeastern Area Labor Federation of Pennsylvania, said:
John McCain has supported every bad trade deal that has cost Pennsylvania hundreds of thousands of jobs. He is fooling himself if he believes that this economy is strong, when working families all across Pennsylvania are losing their homes and their jobs under the crippling weight of McCain’s economic policies. Pennsylvania’s working families can’t afford McCain.
The Pennsylvania actions are part of the nationwide AFL-CIO “McCain Revealed” campaign. For more information see: www.mccainrevealed.com.
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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
6 Comments
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What’s really funny is that there’s someone else in this race who’s tied even closer to NAFTA, but the AFL-CIO can’t come out against *her*.
I’d love to see the AFL-CIO actually come out and say, “NAFTA is bad and we’re going to fight every politician of either party that supported it.” But instead, you come out with this nonsense, which just makes the labor movement look either dishonest or stupid.
You can either help workers organize or you can be a surrogate attack dog for NAFTA-loving Democrats, but you can’t do both.
Yep, She is just as big a supporter of NAFTA as McCain.
She pulled a dirty trick in Ohio. The Canadian News helping her out.
I hope Pennsylvanians will not trust her!!!! She wants to make WalMarts all over!!! ‘Work for less and keep prices low and then make the prices higher and keep wages low”.
She is supported by the first person to cross the Writer’s Guild picket line (Ellen DeGeneres)!! Real good union person!!! NOT!
IAM embarrassed our union supported her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Could not agree more with David, or no2scabs! Party politics is getting our movement nowhere. Both major parties support government imposed “free trade” deals. Free from what exactly? The only positive thing that could result from Clintons election to the presidents office is amnesty for our immigrant fellow workers, whom the bosses are currently using to drive down wages, and bust unions.
And of course the only candidate who will openly say that NAFTA needs to be repealed, that ‘free trade’ agreements approved by the Republicans and Democrats are a disaster is Ralph Nader,
But, strangely, the AFL-CIO Working Families Vote website doesn’t even acknowledge that Nader exists, much less that he is by far the best on labor issues. Today’s poll on the WFV site revealed that almost 60 percent of respondents have voted for ‘third party’ candidates, yet we are told to ignore them and that we have to go along with the corrupt two party system.
Why does the WFV site have info on Ron Paul but not Ralph Nader, or Cynthia McKinney, who is likely to be the Green Party nominee? Third Party candidates can put pressure on the Democrats to move to more progressive positions, instead of towards the Republicans, as they are now doing.
Watch out Pennsylvania, there’s a ringer in the crowd.
Labor faker Buffenbarger (IAM) let loose a tirade against those of us who support Obama. Get a load of this:
“Give me a break! I’ve got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won’t last a round against the Republican attack machine. He’s a poet, not a fighter.”
Buffenbarger is a career pie card. The disdain he shows for those of us who actually work for a living is an example of how far removed he is from the rank and file. His retreat-as-a-strategy brand of business-unionism has cost the membership of the IAM dearly. How many more IAM jobs will move offshore under his “leadership”?
Clearly, NAFTA and other lousy trade agreements have severely damaged workers. Nonetheless, Buffenbarger kow-tows to Hillary Clinton even though she is a “free trader” of the first order. What gives? It seems he’d rather be invited to her inaugural ball instead of serving his membership.
Here’s Hillary in Her Own Words… (let Buffenbarger alibi this)
Office of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
| Speech | July 29, 2002
Remarks of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to the
2002 DLC National Conversation
“We all know the record of the DLC, the Progressive Policy Institute and, of course, the Clinton-Gore Administration. The economic recovery plan stands first and foremost as a testament to both good ideas and political courage. National service. The Brady Bill. Family Leave. NAFTA. Investment in science and technology. New markets. Charter schools. The Earned Income Tax Credit. The welfare to work partnership. The COPS program. The SAFER program. All of these came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work.”
***
During Clinton’s 1996 visit to Texas, United Press International reported that she “touted the president’s support for NAFTA.”
In her memoir, Clinton trumpeted her husband’s “successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA.”
The Buffalo News reports that in 1998 she “praised corporations for mounting ‘a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA.’
And her lead Wall Street fundraiser told reporters that Clinton remains “committed” to NAFTA’s “free” trade structure.
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Voters – including union members - in Pennsylvania must not allow themselves to be hoodwinked by the Clinton crowd. Although she now claims she opposes NAFTA, that new position is an obvious attempt to garner the votes of organized labor.
And she sure has some strange bedfellows.
McCain’s record is indeed bad when it comes to putting jobs over seas. The man obviously has trouble knowing the difference between free trade and fair trade. He is for the Colombian FTA which is truly NOT in the best interest of not only American workers, but also Colombian workers. Hillary is said she is against it, but it was Bill who started Plan Colombian (a failed project that has cost the US taxpayer over $5 billion) and who was honored last year by Colombia with a huge presentation in NYC. So I wonder if she really is against it. Probably just hoping that GWB will get the FTA with Colombia passed this year and then she won’t have to deal with it.