Obama: We Should Make It Easier for Workers to Organize
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Although the focus on the Employee Free Choice Act is on the U.S. House and the Senate, it’s important to remember the reason we’re closer than ever to passing this critical bill is because working people turned out in huge numbers to elect a president who will sign it into law. We got a fresh reminder of that commitment yesterday when Barack Obama paid a visit to Costa Mesa, Calif., to discuss the economy.
In his comments at the Costa Mesa town hall meeting, Obama pointed out that making it easier for workers to form unions is critical to making the economy work for everyone again.
Robert Balgenorth, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of California, was among the attendees, and in a question and answer session, Balgenorth criticized the Bush administration’s failure to enforce prevailing wage laws and other protections for workers. Obama pointed to these protections as key to strengthening the middle class—and added that workers also must have the freedom to form unions if we’re going to build an economy that’s sustainable in the long term:
We think it is important that unions have the opportunity to organize themselves…the business press says that’s anti-business and whenever I hear that I’m always reminded of what Henry Ford said when he first started building the Model T, and he was paying his workers really well. And somebody asked him, they said, “Why are you paying your workers so well?” He said, “Well, if I don’t pay them well, they won’t be able to buy a car.”
