As a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama pledged to stand up for America’s working families if he were elected.Within days of moving into the White House, President Obama started living up to that promise. On Jan. 30, Obama signed three pro-labor executive orders and also announced the creation of a White House “Task Force on Middle Class Working Families” to be chaired by Vice President Joe Biden.
SIU President Michael Sacco and other members of the AFL-CIO executive council attended a White House ceremony for the signings and task-force announcement.
One day earlier, Obama signed into law the labor-backed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which aims to ensure equal pay for equal work. It is named after an Alabama woman who, after working nearly 20 years at a Goodyear tire plant, discovered she had been paid significantly less than men doing the same job.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the week’s actions “show that the Obama White House is the working families’ White House. It couldn’t come at a better time…. The Task Force on Middle Class Working Families and the executive orders are the first step in a long road to restore balance between workers and corporations.”
The executive orders reverse previous ones governing how federal contractors interact with unionized workers. The first new order requires federal service contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
The second reverses on old order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
The third prevents federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining. (One week later, the men and women in the nation’s building and construction trades won a major victory when Obama signed another executive order overturning a ban on project labor agreements on federal and federally funded construction. Project labor agreements generally set wages and establish work rules and methods of settling grievances on large multi-contractor construction projects.)
“We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests,” Obama said. “I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me, it’s part of the solution. You cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement.”
Meanwhile, according to a White House news release, the task force “is a major initiative targeted at raising the living standards of middle-class, working families in America. It is comprised of top-level administration policy makers, and in addition to regular meetings, it will conduct outreach sessions with representatives of labor, business, and the advocacy communities.”
Biden said, “America’s middle class is hurting. Trillions of dollars in home equity and retirement savings and college savings are gone. And every day, more and more Americans are losing their jobs. President Obama and I are determined to change this. Quite simply, a strong middle class equals a strong America. We can’t have one without the other. This Task Force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across the board and determine if they are helping or hurting the middle class. It is our charge to get the middle class – the backbone of this country – up and running again.”
According to the White House, the vice president and members of the task force will work with a wide array of federal agencies that have responsibility for key issues facing middle class and working families. They will expedite administrative reforms, propose executive orders, and develop legislative and policy proposals that can be of special importance to working families.
Obama has set the following goals for the task force:
■ Expanding education and lifelong training opportunities
■ Improving work and family balance
■ Restoring labor standards, including workplace safety
■ Helping to protect middle-class and working-family incomes
■ Protecting retirement security
Members of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families will include the secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Commerce, as well as the directors of the National Economic Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, and the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.
The Middle Class Task Force’s first official meeting was slated to take place Feb. 27 in Philadelphia. In an op-ed first published the same day the task force was announced, Biden wrote in part, “Over the course of America’s last economic expansion, the middle class participated in very few of the benefits. But now in the midst of this historic economic downturn, the middle class sure is participating in all of the pain. Something is seriously wrong when the economic engine of this nation — the great middle class — is treated this way.”
He said that the new administration’s first task was getting the economy back on track but added, “We have an important long-term task as well. Once this economy starts growing again, we need to make sure the benefits of that growth reach the people responsible for it. We can’t stand by and watch as that narrow sliver of the top of the income scale wins a bigger piece of the pie — while everyone else gets a smaller and smaller slice.
“One of the things that makes this task force distinctive is it brings together — in one place — those agencies that have the most impact on the wellbeing of the middle class in our country. We’ll be looking at everything from access to college and training with the Department of Education, to business development with the Department of Commerce, to child care reform with Health and Human Services, to labor law with the Department of Labor. With this task force, we’ll have a single, high-visibility group with one goal: to raise the living standards of middle-class families.”
He concluded, “Over the upcoming months, we will focus on answering those concerns that matter most to families. What can we do to make retirement more secure? How can we make child and elder care more affordable? How do we improve workplace safety? How are we going to get the cost of college within reach? What can we do to help weary parents juggle work and family? And, above all else, what are the jobs of the future? Here, we’ll be looking at green jobs, better- paying jobs, better-quality jobs.”
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