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It looks like GOP ‘sucker bait’ is still attracting some union fish
By BERRY CRAIG
            MAYFIELD, Ky. – Thirty-four percent of union members and retirees are undecided about the election “and are open to either candidate,” according to an AFL-CIO report.
            One in three people who pack union cards don’t know whom to vote for? I don’t get it.
            -- A recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll has President Bush’s overall job approval rating at 25 percent.
            -- Through last year, Sen. John McCain, the Republican who wants to succeed Bush, had voted for Bush-backed bills almost 90 percent of the time, according to a 2007 Congressional Quarterly report. He voted the Bush way 95 percent of the time in 2007.
            -- McCain has voted for union-supported legislation only 16 percent of the time, says the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education.
            There’s more:
            -- Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful, has a COPE score of 98 percent.
            -- He’s been with Bush on bills less than 41 percent of the time through 2007, including just 40 percent in 2007, Congressional Quarterly says.
           So what gives with 34 percent undecided union voters?
            No doubt some of them are white people who are reluctant to vote for Obama because he is African American. Others may be inclined to believe the lies being spread by Internet nut jobs and other right-wing crazies that Obama’s a Muslim who hates his country and swore his oath of office on the Koran.  
            “A lot of union members also have their own hot buttons,” said Jeff Wiggins, a Steelworker who sits on the Kentucky State AFL-CIO executive board. “They don't vote on union issues. They vote on social issues that don't have a thing to do with their jobs or their unions.”
            Those issues include “the Three-Gs,” Wiggins added. “God, guns and gays -- Republicans run on them all the time.”
            The social issues are sucker bait that attracts union fish. “I had a guy the other day tell me he’d vote for union candidates if they’re against ‘partial-birth abortion,’” said Wiggins, who is putting hundreds of miles on his union-made Ford SUV as Kentucky Zone One coordinator for the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2008 program.
            Wiggins, who is also president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO, has visited dozens of union halls in Western Kentucky, his territory. He talks up AFL-CIO-endorsed office-seekers from Obama down through candidates for the Kentucky legislature. He hands out stacks of pamphlets and other literature and gives away bright yellow “Labor 2008” tee shirts.
            “Barack Obama votes with us 98 percent of the time and John McCain votes with us 16 percent of the time,” Wiggins said. “That makes Obama 82 percent better for labor.
            “John McCain is ‘John McSame’ as in the same old anti-union policies of George W. Bush. It’s as simple as that.”
            McCain’s message for union voters is simple, too. He’s against abortion, “partial birth” or otherwise. He loves God and guns, but not gay rights.
            But mum’s the word from McCain on union issues when he’s fishing in labor’s lake. He’d just as soon union members didn’t know he also loves right to work, NAFTA and CAFTA, but not the Employee Free Choice Act.
            In his address at the Steelworkers’ 2008 convention, Leo W. Gerard, the union president, warned against union-busting politicians like McCain who try to scam workers with social issues.
            “….In one election, it might be gun rights,” he said, “…In another it’s tax cuts or the right to life.
            “But the bottom line is always the same. Distract and deceive.  Divide and conquer.
            “Time and again, they try to fill our hearts with fear. Time and again, their strategies get some of our members voting for politicians who couldn’t give a damn about working people.”  
            In 2004, 38 percent of union members voted to reelect Bush – who in his first term had proven himself to be one of the most anti-union presidents in history -- over union-endorsed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a CNN election day exit poll showed. You’d think convincing union members to vote against their own interests would be mission impossible for anti-union candidates. But with the “Three Gs” for sucker bait, it’s been mission accomplished for a lot of them.
            Wiggins knows about the report that says around a third of union members are on the fence over the presidential election. “The fact that they’re undecided means we can still win them over,” he said. “The choice is clear: Obama is 98 percent with us. McCain is 84 percent against us.”
            Gerard agreed that Obama is the right choice. “....If we want a president hell bent on privatizing Social Security, McCain will give us that, just like Bush did,” he said in his speech. “If we want a president who voted to legalize scabs, we’ll get that with McCain, the same as we did with Bush. If we want the union cut out of bargaining health care benefits, that’s what McCain wants to do.
            “If we want our health care benefits taxed as income, that’s what McCain plans to do. If we want a president who’ll veto the Employee Free Choice Act, McCain’s all for that, just like Bush was.
            “If we want a president who says he’s never seen a free trade deal he doesn’t love, that’s exactly what McCain says….John McCain will stick us with four more years of legalizing scabs, undercutting our pensions, messing with our health care, and cutting more rotten trade deals that are killing our jobs.”
            Obama supports the Employee Free Choice Act, Gerard said. Obama “will go to bat for universal health care that lowers costs.” He has “a plan to revitalize manufacturing” and he “…wants to restore a measure of sovereignty to our lives by making workers the top priority in any trade deal he negotiates,” according to Gerard.
            “So, sisters and brothers,” the top Steelworker concluded, “There’s a real choice this time around. We can have real change by shooting for the stars. Or we can shoot ourselves in the foot and get four more years of Bush’s assault on working people with John McCain.”

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