As a stumping candidate, Obama declared: “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 put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.”
See it with your own eyes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA9KC8SMu3o
So, why hasn’t he kicked off his Motown Gala dancin’ shoes and slipped into some comfy walkers to join his buds in Madison, Wisc. ?
Especially after firing the early shot about “assaulting union rights”?
Well, turns out that Obama has some explaining to do.
As the WSJ reports:
President Obama, the great patron of the working man, also happens to be the great CEO of one of the least union-friendly shop floors in the nation.
Fact: President Obama is the boss of a civil work force that numbers up to two million (excluding postal workers and uniformed military).
Fact: Those federal workers cannot bargain for wages or benefits. Fact: Washington, D.C. is, in the purest sense, a “right to work zone.” Federal employees are not compelled to join a union, nor to pay union dues.
Fact: Neither Mr. Obama, nor the prior Democratic majority, ever acted to give their union chums a better federal deal.
Fact: Democratic President Jimmy Carter, backed by a Democratic Congress, … severely proscribed the issues over which employees could bargain, as well as prohibited compulsory union support.
Fact: Federal employee unions . Unions are limited to bargaining over personnel employment practices such as whether employees are allowed to wear beards, or whether the government must pay to clean uniforms.
Perhaps, Pres.. Obama will explain how it is that Wisconsin is wrong to ask for the same budget flexibility that he enjoys as president.
If he’s unable or unwilling) to do that, perhaps he’ll tell the thugs he dispatched to Wisconsin to back off.
The Homa Files 