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Obama: We Need Strong Unions for a Strong Economy |
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| President Obama greets convention delegates, including Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara Easterling. | |
President Barack Obama had a strong, inspiring message for delegates to the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention: We’re going to make this country work again.
In a speech punctuated by chants and standing ovations, Obama said he’s committed to the same goals as the union movement: restoring the economy, getting health care for everyone and passing the Employee Free Choice Act:
“These are the reforms I’m proposing. These are the reforms labor has been championing. These are the reforms the American people need. And these are the reforms I intend to sign into law.
“Quality, affordable health insurance. A world-class education. Good jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced. A strong labor movement. That’s how we’ll lift up hardworking families. That’s how we’ll grow our middle class. That’s how we’ll put opportunity within reach in the United States of America.”
Throughout, the enthusiastic crowd gave him multiple standing ovations—when one woman shouted “I love you,” he responded: “I love you, too, sister.” In turn, Obama showed he understands the needs of working people and the unions that represent them:
“When labor succeeds—that’s when our middle class succeeds. And when our middle class succeeds—that’s when the United States of America succeeds.”
Obama pledged his continued support of the Employee Free Choice Act, because “when workers want a union, they should get a union.”
The economic crisis was brought on by greed and irresponsibility, Obama said, and we can’t wait to rebuild a stronger, better and fairer economy:
The problems in our economy preceded this economic crisis. Just last week, a Census report came out showing that in 2008, before this downturn, family income fell to its lowest point in over a decade; and more families slid into poverty. That is unacceptable. And I refuse to let America go back to the culture of irresponsibility that made it possible.
Obama spent much of his speech talking about health care and thanked union members for their hard work on making health reform possible:
Few have fought for this cause harder, and few have championed it longer than you…you know why this is so important. You know this isn’t just about the millions of Americans who don’t have health insurance, it’s about the hundreds of millions more who do: Americans who worry that they’ll lose their insurance if they lose their job, who fear their coverage will be denied because of a pre-existing condition, who know that one accident or illness could mean financial ruin.
When are we going to stop this? When are we going to say enough is enough? How many more workers have to lose their coverage? How many more families have to go into the red for a sick loved one? We have talked this issue to death year after year, decade after decade…now is the time for action. Now is the time to deliver on health insurance reform.
Obama also said that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped pull the economy up and prevent even worse crisis. He pledged to keep working to create good jobs and make sure that “Made in America” won’t just be a slogan, but a reality.
Obama has already signed into law pro-worker legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and an expansion of health care to millions of children in need. He asked the attendees to come together and fight with him for an America with lasting prosperity.
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This well documented, researched article exposes just how the Obama’s “health care reform” is a serious class war attack on working. Please follow this link for full details.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/eman-s15.shtml
Obama advisor champions rationed health care
By Kate Randall
15 September 2009
Ezekiel J. Emanuel is a close advisor to the Obama administration on issues of health care policy. He currently serves as a special advisor on health policy to the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and is the chair of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health.
He has authored several books, including most recently Healthcare Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America, which elaborates his plan for restructuring the US health care system. [1]
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Obama has pledged to slash more than $600 billion from Medicare and Medicaid as part of his health care plan. Utilizing comparative effectiveness research (CER), this council will recommend cuts—in the form of cost-cutting “efficiencies”—to these federal programs for the elderly, disabled and poor. The cuts are central to Obama’s overhaul of the health care system and are supported by all versions of legislation currently under consideration in Congress.
For decades, efforts to slash Medicare benefits have been frustrated by political opposition, particularly from the working class and senior citizens. The appointment of this body is a thoroughly anti-democratic effort to ride roughshod over this popular opposition to implement deep cuts that will severely impact the health and lives of millions of Americans.
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In all of these scenarios, Emanuel presents the necessity of rationing as if scarcity of medical services and technologies were a natural occurrence, rather than the result of the organization of society on a capitalist basis.
In reality, there are already vast resources that could be devoted to providing quality health care for all members of society, and all the objective prerequisites for exponentially increasing these resources.
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One of the most insidious features of Emanuel’s plan is the proposal to scrap Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). He writes: “Current enrollees will have the option of joining the Guaranteed Healthcare Access Plan. Over a period of about fifteen years, these programs will be phased out.” [11] His vision of universal health care therefore eliminates the only government administered health care programs.
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While not adopting Emanuel’s Guaranteed Healthcare Access Plan in its entirety, Obama has incorporated its fundamental principles in his proposals. These policies are part of a restructuring of American capitalism and class relations in the US that is taking place under the pretext of addressing the economic crisis—in the case of health care, the necessity to craft “deficit neutral” legislation. Their implementation poses a sharp and permanent lowering of the living standards of the working class.
For information on the quotes in this article and to see them in their original and intended context please read the article below….
http://mediamatters.org/research/200908280011
The author of the WSJ article was also fired from her position as a reporter from the paper The News Republic during the Clinton administration for her article “No Exit”, which also misquoted and flat out lied about that presidents health care bill. The News Republic had to print a front page retraction of her story, but it, like this story, was reprinted so many times so quickly that the damage was done. It was a major factor in the failure of Clinton’s attempt at health care reform. Please research the information that is presented to you as fact, we cannot afford to trust the “respectable” news agencies any longer. There business is not the truth, it is selling papers.
Curious to see if this makes it.
I listened to the President speak of what brought our nation to present day and have to question if the greed and corruption within the house of labor is also addressed? I listen as he speaks of health care issues and costs “Health care costs are at a ten year high of $13,000.00 a year”.
As a fourth generation union member I have seen “The House Of Labor” move into the health insurance business. A market that is set up for profit and not necessarily of benefits, and my insurance costs per year higher than those of which he speaks. And when times such as these arise, I also loose my coverage’s.
Yes, I have to wonder if “The House Of Labor” is included when the President speaks of the down fall of a great nation.
We need the EFCA!!
For information on the quotes in the WSJ article and to see them in their original and intended context please read the article below….
http://mediamatters.org/research/200908280011
The author of the WSJ article was also fired from her position as a reporter from the paper The News Republic during the Clinton administration for her article “No Exit”, which also misquoted and flat out lied about that presidents health care bill. The News Republic had to print a front page retraction of her story, but it, like this story, was reprinted so many times so quickly that the damage was done. It was a major factor in the failure of Clinton’s attempt at health care reform. Please research the information that is presented to you as fact, we cannot afford to trust the “respectable” news agencies any longer. There business is not the truth, it is selling papers.
French-Canadian labor setup: natural transition to sector-wide bargaining here (collective-collective bargaining)?
Checking out of my national-chain supermarket a few months back, the bagger took no notice of my requests to not place heavy 12-packs on the underside of the cart (bad back here). A young employee finally informed me that the bagger could not speak a word of English. Have supermarket pay scales dropped so low — Wal-Mart’s entry into the retail food business having forced two-tiered contracts down on the heads of new employees — that (middle-class career seeking) Americans need no longer apply?
American supermarket employees (especially in California and Illinois by my won observations) would kill to negotiate contracts on a sector-wide basis — like they do in every modern first-world economy except the USA and Japan (where labor is in a lot more trouble than most of the world knows).
A streamlined version of sector-wide labor agreements — the French and French-Canadian practice of requiring non-union firms to operate under agreements negotiated with unionized firms — is ready and waiting for a fair and balanced labor marketplace. Economies from Scandinavia to Argentina to Malaysia use different mixes of sector-wide rules — some confined only to certain industries — there are all ways to try it.
Adopting French-blueprint sector-wide here would not require — on the run — building a broader union base than we ever built before (as would going German style, full-out unionized — Wal-Mart recently closed 88 big boxes in Germany because it could not compete paying equal wages). And, the French-Canadian example is right next store for our convenient study — in an economy we have no trouble understanding.
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If we could have predicted to 1968-Americans that, by 2007, 30% of Americans* would sink below a realistically set poverty line (not the 50+ year old federal formula of 3X the price of an emergency diet: dried beans only please, no canned — $18,000 for a family of three pays for health insurance and $100 a week for everything else) — and that 25% of Americans’ wages would sink below LBJ’s $10/hr (adjusted for inflation) minimum wage — what could they have guessed would happen: a mini ice age, a limited nuclear exchange followed by a mini ice age (nuclear winter), or multiple depressions or even tsunamis would bring American employees (not European or Australian) so low?
Or would they have told us we were crazy — that it could not possibly happen? Well, it did.
[* http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2008/02/are-38-of-american-families-living.html ]
As A retired union member I find it interesting that the afl-cio would want anything to do with Odrama’s healthcare plan. All union members will lose their healthcare under Odrama’s plan. The companies will drop everyone as soon as they can dump them because the fine will be much cheaper than providing their people with the care they are getting now. All of us that have care with the companies we retired from will then have to pay for the plan that is now covered by the company we retired from. Or are they going to continue to pay our prem. for us ?? I dought it very much. So as our retirment money is worth less and less we will also have to pay our own prems. for the same coverage we had for free with the companies we retired from.
I voted for Obama because eight years of Bush set me back as it did most working class folks. However I am disappointed with his positions on the war, prosecution of Bush/Cheyney for their criminal activities and lessening the struggle for healthcare reform to “health insurance” reform.
Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is essential if organized labor is to succeed in growing and becoming stronger. My fear is that by the time EFCA becomes a reality it will be so watered down that it will render it just as useless as the present labor relations law is. We need to hold Obama and Congress accountable to their promises!