Dick Meister: Obama, labor, and FDR

Pub date September 21, 2009
SectionBruce Blog

Obama is well on his way to becoming the most pro-labor president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, former San Francisco Chronicle labor editor and labor reporter for KQED’s TV’s “Newsroom,” has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a author, reporter, editor, and commentator.)

It¹s clear that Barack Obama is well on the way to becoming the most pro-labor president since Franklin D. Roosevelt – clear that he’s firmly committed to strengthening the vital union rights that FDR secured for U.S.
workers seven decades ago.

Consider Obama’s address to the AFL-CIO’s national convention in Pittsburgh on Sept. 15. Yes, the president was speaking to a friendly audience, saying what the convention delegates wanted him to say and promising them what they wanted him to promise. But his were not empty words.