Unions endorse Obama

Labor says: "YES, we CAN"!


Yesterday Barack Obama collected the support of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a politically active union with significant membership in the upcoming Democratic battlegrounds. The 1.3-million member UFCW has 69,000 members in Ohio and another 26,000 in Texas. The food workers also have 19,000 members in Wisconsin, which holds a primary next Tuesday. The union is comprised of supermarket workers and meatpackers, with 40% of the membership under 30 years old, an age group which Obama has been doing especially well with.

Today, he won the support of the 1.9-million member Service Employees International Union. The politically active union represents workers in health care, building services and other industries, and has donated more than $25 million to candidates in the past two decades, mainly to Democrats.

"There has never been a fight in Illinois or a fight in the nation where our members have not asked Barack Obama for assistance and he has not done everything he could to help us," Andy Stern, the union's president, told reporters in announcing the decision.

Stern said that in the months since union leaders met with several Democratic candidates last fall, "the excitement has been building and building for Obama."

These union endorsements offer a chance to increase support in the primarily blue collar primary states that are scheduled to vote in the next few weeks, particularly Ohio and Texas on March 4 and Pennsylvania on April 22.