Criticism mounts as labor
continues to be ignored by
President Obama
Health care reform and a flurry of Obama administration regulations have caused internal divisions within the labor movement and led one of the Democratic Party’s biggest supporters to publicly rebuke the president.
The implementation of Obamacare, which received major union support when it was passed in 2010, has soured relations between labor groups and the White House and splintered labor coalitions.
More than 40,000 workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) left the AFL-CIO in August, blasting the union for being “in lockstep” with Obama on health care and immigration reform.
“We feel that the Federation has done a great disservice to the labor movement and all working people by going along to get along,” ILWU President Robert McEllrath said in a letter announcing the split. “President Obama ran on a platform that he would not tax medical plans. … Yet the Federation later lobbied affiliates to support a bill [Obamacare] that taxed our health care plans.”
The break-up occurred just weeks after the AFL-CIO’s Nevada chapter issued a resolution stating that Obamacare would eliminate full-time jobs and endanger generous health care plans that unions have negotiated for their members.
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