Support Unions and Collective Bargaining

Mr. Talk at Accountable Talk brought this video to our attention. It's a video of Candidate Obama...the same one who said this about NCLB:

Don't label a school as failing one day and then throw your hands up and walk away from it the next. Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test...You didn't devote your lives to testing. You devoted it to teaching, and teaching is what you should be allowed to do...

In the following video, then Senator Obama talked about the rights of American workers to collectively bargain...the very right that is being threatened by state legislatures and governors around the country. As President, Mr. Obama has come down, softly, on the side of the workers...but we haven't heard anything from him since the first day of the Wisconsin situation. Listen to what he said as a candidate...

"And understand this, if American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the white house I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America, because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner." -- Barack Obama, Spartanburg SC, 11/3/07

This man...this candidate would get my vote. Where is he?

Mr Talk had this to say to the President.

Mr. President, we can't wait for you to find that pair of comfortable shoes. In fact, there's no need for you to picket for hours on end--teachers and other union members will do that. But if you would just go to Wisconsin and stand with the picketers for one minute--one minute--and voice this same kind of support for collective bargaining that you promised us as a candidate, you would change the game immediately.

This action doesn't require 60 votes. It doesn't force you to choose between extending the Bush tax cuts or extending unemployment benefits. So there's no excuse not to live up to your promise. All you have to do is stand up and say a few words.

And you are good at words. Now let's see some action.

It's time that the President puts his political money where his mouth is.

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