Call him charming, call him well-scripted. When President George W. Bush gave his rousing address at the Republican National Convention in New York City, Sept. 2, he was so smooth butter could not melt in his mouth. Bush talks a good game. He spoke extensively about the war in Iraq and glossed over the issues of concern to working families — jobs, affordable health care, education and the state of the economy. If you didn’t know better or did not know someone who remains unemployed after losing his/her job more than two years ago, or someone living without health insurance, you too could have fallen for Bush’s reality-challenged vision of the United States.

By Labor’s standards, Bush has been undoubtedly the most anti-union and the worst president for America’s working families and the middle class. Even the Teamsters Union, which supported President Bush in 2000 and tried — successfully — to work with his administration on several labor issues, is now in the forefront of the campaign to unseat this President on November 2.

“The Bush administration’s actions speak louder than words,” Teamster General President James P. Hoffa wrote in his September message. He added: “It [the administration] has consistently ignored the needs of working families while putting the privileged first. The Bush/Cheney White House has chosen tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for big business while millions of high-wage, high-productivity manufacturing jobs have been lost or outsourced overseas. In fact, the latest Bush proposal will eliminate overtime for six million workers.”

Echoing what labor leaders have been saying for four years, New York Times Editorial columnist Bob Herbert said it well when he wrote last month: “America’s working families look to a president for leadership, vision and policies that will benefit and improve their work and family lives.”

What they got in Bush is a president who, in only four years, has American workers on the defensive. Herbert wrote: “In a tight labor market, when jobs are plentiful, workers have leveraged and can demand increased wages and benefits. But today’s workers have lost power in many different ways — through the slack labor market, government policies that favor corporate interests, the weakening of unions, the growth of lower paying service industries — the end result of all this is a portrait of American families struggling just to hang on, rather than to get ahead. The benefits of productivity gains and economic growth are flowing to profits, not worker compensation. The fat cats are getting fatter, while the workers, at least for the time being, are watching the curtain come down on the heralded American dream.”

On November 2, Americans will have the opportunity to choose a president who has the interest of working families high on his agenda.


Local 237 Endorses Kerry

How you vote is a personal decision, but after researching the candidates’ record, Teamsters Local 237, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the AFL-CIO have endorsed John Kerry for president.

If you are not yet convinced that John Kerry deserves your vote, G.P Hoffa and Local 237 President Carl Haynes urge you to look at each candidate’s actions and not just listen to their campaign rhetoric before casting a vote for president in November.

An examination of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s 20-year record in the U.S. Senate reveals a leader who earned a 91 percent lifetime AFL-CIO voting record on such important working family issues as jobs, health care, worker safety, education and civil rights. President George W. Bush’s four-year record in the White House shows a much different history.

See Where the Presidential Candidates Stand on Domestic Issues to compare Kerry and Bush on vital working family issues.