Labor Responses to the State of the Union

The general tenor of the labor community is that Obama was typically tepid on labor issues in his State of the Union. He mentioned in passing a union workplace in Milwaukee as an example of jobs being brought back to the United States, but the union was incidental to the point. He praised the UAW for taking concessions in the GM deal. And he talked about his usual teacher reform game, one of only two places Mitch Daniels said there was common ground among the two of them. Given that Daniels is leading the anti-union charge in Indiana (in fact, the right to work a person to death law passed the Indiana House today and is virtually guaranteed to become law), that’s both a very bad sign and quite typical of Obama’s weak support for his labor allies.

Of course, Obama presented a lot of common-sense ideas in his speech and his support for a functioning NLRB is commendable. But even though he needs union support desperately in his reelection campaign, all he’s really offering labor is that he’s better than a Republican. Which is something, but not enough. Despite internal annoyances at Obama, all the unions will fall in line and support the president; many unions sent out press releases praising the speech, though with varied amounts of enthusiasm.

A couple of links:

Timothy Noah calls “unions” the “most conspicuously absent” word in the speech and notes rightly that Obama’s reference to the so-called greatest generation and their successes existed precisely because strong unions forced bosses to shift resources into the pockets of working-class people. Obama either doesn’t get that or is more or less indifferent to it.

Mike Elk provides a good overview to the entire issue, both the disappointments and positives of the speech.

Of course, we might be disappointed in Obama, but he’s vastly better than Mitch Daniels’ pro-capitalist hackery. Josh Eidelson discusses the brazenness of Republicans choosing Daniels to give their response and discusses the issue of his unionbusting in great detail. He also notes the odd appeal that Daniels has to a lot of left-center media types, ranging from Chris Matthews to Ezra Klein.