McCain has called Obama, “a tool of organized labor”, he is delusional, McCain that is, Obama has offered little the show solidarity with the strikers. He is NO tool of organized labor.
During a campaign speech in suburban Detroit Wednesday, Barack Obama, the leading Democratic candidate for the US presidential nomination, made several comments about the strike by 3,650 workers at American Axle & Manufacturing.
“Not too far from here, at American Axle, UAW members have gone on strike to fight for good wages and good benefits, and a decent standard of living,” he told the audience at a town hall meeting at Macomb County Community College. “These are things that all hardworking families should expect and that UAW members deserve, and we stand in solidarity with the folks on the picket lines, and the families impacted by this strike.”
He continued by saying that the strike at AAM was part of a broader struggle “to ensure that we have good manufacturing jobs so American workers can raise a family, have health care when they need it, put their children through college, and retire with dignity and security.”
These were the first public remarks by Obama about the strike, although workers have been walking the picket lines for nearly three months. The American Axle strike is one of the longest strikes in the auto industry in decades.
Obama did not propose any assistance to the strikers—many of whom are losing their homes and being forced to live on hand-outs from soup kitchens with nothing but $200 a week in strike benefits.
Nor did he condemn or propose anything to stop CEO Richard Dauch, who has threatened to close the plants and shift production to Mexico if strikers do not accept a 50 percent wage cut.
American Axle workers should take Obama’s pronouncement of support for what it is: a phony and insincere effort to fool them and maintain the illusion that the Democratic Party speaks for working people. Presuming he is the Democratic Party nominee, Obama will continue to posture as a candidate for working people, even as he defends the basic interests of the corporations and Wall Street.
Obama did not come to Michigan to support the struggles of American Axle workers and other auto workers. Rather his purpose was to strengthen his ties to the auto executives and the United Auto Workers bureaucracy in order to further his campaign for the Democratic nomination.
I suggest that the workers keep this in mind and use the information at general election time. There will be a candidate out there that has their best interests at heart; find them and vote for them.