Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. is paying tariffs on imported tires. Free-trade agreements sought by Caterpillar Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are on hold. Delta Air Lines Inc. flight attendants may join a union.
There’s a common thread running through these developments. Organized labor is gaining momentum under the Democratic administration of President Obama.
Though reaching their most-publicized goals — legislation making it easier to organize and a government-run health insurance program — remains in doubt, unions are making other gains through executive orders, rule changes and appointments. More advances may be ahead as regulatory nominees are confirmed.
“You absolutely know something is going to happen to you, you just don’t know when,” said Michael Lotito, a San Francisco lawyer at Jackson Lewis LLP who handles labor issues for companies. “There is going to be a flurry of labor action down the pike.”
Their status is a change for labor officials, who say the Republican administration of George W. Bush was hostile to their agenda. “Welcome back to the White House!” Vice President Biden said to union leaders who met with the president at the White House 10 days after his inauguration.
Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, says he meets monthly with Obama, and that union representatives have “daily contacts throughout the administration.”
Unions were among Obama’s biggest supporters in the 2008 election, with 68 percent of AFL-CIO members voting for him in so-called battleground states, according to an election night poll by Peter Hart Research Associates. Labor unions and their political action committees spent a record $450 million during the campaign to help Democrats win the White House and gain control of Congress.
Obama sided with the United Steelworkers last month against tire makers such as Cooper Tire and imposed 35 percent tariffs on tires imported from China. Bush rejected putting tariffs on Chinese products all four times the issue came before him.
Complaints from business about union gains are an affront to workers, said Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers.
“All those ‘victories’ they are talking about — that’s pablum from those bastards,” Gerard, 62, said in an interview. “All we’re doing is standing up for jobs.”
The Steelworkers also pressed for the “Buy American” provision included in Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus program adopted in February. Obama’s bailout of General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC saved jobs of United Auto Workers members, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters claimed victory when Congress scrapped in March a pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to deliver products in the United States.
The AFL-CIO and the Teamsters also led union opposition to a pending free-trade agreement with Panama. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office dropped plans for a vote on the measure in May, saying Obama wanted first to offer a new “framework” for how trade fits into other administration programs.
“We’re beyond being befuddled; we’re frustrated,” said Bill Lane, director of government affairs for Peoria, Illinois- based Caterpillar, the world’s biggest maker of construction equipment. “There is way too much focus on protectionist schemes that are intended to close the U.S. market.”
