Obama’s First 100 Days Mark Major Wins for Working Families
It’s worth repeating—again and again: What a difference an election makes, especially an election in which working family voters pool their strength and efforts to put an end to the most anti-worker, corporate-beholden administration in modern times and elect a president who shares our values and dreams.
Today is the 100th day of Barack Obama’s presidency. In the past three months, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress—operating with a Republican axe hanging over it—have made major strides to rebuild America for working families.
Obama Overturns Bush Exec. Order on Project Labor Agreements
The men and women in the nation’s building and construction trades won a major victory today when President Obama signed an executive order overturning the Bush administration’s ban on project labor agreements (PLAs) on federal and federally funded construction.
The ban was one of the first orders signed by former President George W. Bush when he took office in 2001. Mark H. Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), praised Obama’s action, saying:
The Bush anti-PLA executive order was exactly the type of special interest-driven politics and policy that American voters rejected overwhelmingly last November.
We acknowledge and praise this executive order as being one of the first steps in ushering in a new, more pragmatic and value-conscious approach to governing.
Obama Reverses Bush Executive Orders, Creates Middle Class Task Force
President Barack Obama today reversed three Bush-era anti-worker executive orders and created a Cabinet-level task force to rebuild the nation’s middle class. In a White House ceremony this morning attended by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and other union leaders, Obama signed three executive orders that reverse a series of orders by then-President George W. Bush, which govern the way federal contractors deal with unionized workers.
The three new executive orders:
- Require federal service contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
- Reverse a Bush order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
- Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
