CLINTON, OBAMA GET SPECIFIC BEFORE
COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS ACTIVISTS

In speeches reminiscent of what they’ve said recently on the campaign trail, the remaining Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), hit quite a few specifics in their April 8 speeches to the Communications Workers’ Legislative-Political Conference in Washington.

Obama followed Clinton to the podium before the 700 unionists. Jabs at each other were few and understated. Clinton filled her speech with details. Obama, though also making specific pledges, roused the audience more. “It’s time we had a president who didn’t choke on the word ‘union,’’ was one Obama line that drew an ovation.

The two are campaigning for votes of unionists both in the hall--since CWA declined to endorse a presidential candidate--and in the looming Pennsylvania primary. The only specific commitment from CWA leaders came from Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, a Democratic convention superdelegate, who enthusiastically supports Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama will address 3,000 AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department activists at their D.C. conference the week of April 14.

Among the high points of the candidates’ speeches:

• Both took on not only anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush, but also the presumed GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Clinton described herself as the only candidate “tough enough to stand up to” McCain and the Republicans. Obama linked the two GOPers together.
  
  “If you’re a laid-off worker, the White House says, ‘You’re on your own.’ If you’re a single mom fighting for health care for your kids, the White House says, ‘You’re on your own.’ If you want decent health care for yourself, the White House says, ‘You’re on your own.’ McCain is committed to more of the same,” Obama said.
  
  
• Clinton pledged, anew, that “We’re going to make visible what is now invisible” to the anti-worker GOP Bush regime: Workers. “We’ll make your fight our fight,” she said. “Just like we needed the labor movement in the 20th century, we need it for our partnership in the 21st century--a partnership in reality, not just in rhetoric,” she added in a subtle jab at Obama. “I’m offering real solutions, not just speeches,” she said later.
  
  
• Clinton and Obama also both pledged to fight for and sign the Employee Free Choice Act, which would help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining. She pledged to “call on Congress to pass EFCA within the first 100 days” of its session next year, end Bush’s “assault on unions” and “having a Department of Labor that’s actually pro-labor.”
  
  
• But in a departure from her prior speeches, Clinton promised to campaign for the bill “across the country” after she enters the White House, and among non-unionists, too: “We’re going to tell everyone that unions are important and that in the absence of” workplace union “organization, they’ll continue to see their incomes drop, their benefits erode and the middle class disappear.”
  
  
• “If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union,” Obama said, meaning EFCA’s centerpiece, formally legalizing card-check recognition of unions. “It’s time to get it (EFCA) out of the Senate”--where a GOP filibuster killed it--“and I’ll sign it.”
  
  
• Both oppose Bush’s proposed “free trade” treaty with Colombia, which Bush sent to Congress on April 8 for up-or-down votes. “When organizing workers puts your life at risk,” Obama said, referring to the murder of 2,500-plus Colombian unionists in the past 15 years, “I’m opposing the Colombia FTA.”
  
  
• Clinton also called herself “the only candidate with a plan to fix NAFTA,” the jobs-destroying U.S.-Canada-Mexico “free trade” pact her husband, then president, pushed through a then-Democratic Congress. Clinton did not detail her NAFTA fix, other than “removing the right of any company to sue over labor and environmental” rules.
  
  
• Obama reminded the crowd that “I opposed NAFTA, CAFTA and PNTR (normal trade relations) with China--because we need somebody in the White House who is not thinking about Wall Street but about Main Street.” He also opposes a Bush-proposed free trade pact with South Korea. Obama, however, was not in the Senate for NAFTA or PNTR, nor was Clinton. She did not mention CAFTA, China or Korea.
  
  
• Clinton endorsed seven days of paid sick leave for workers, on top of present unpaid family and medical leave. Obama did not mention family and medical leave.
  
  
• Clinton pledged to “end $55 billion in tax breaks for the drug companies, the oil companies and Wall Street and give the money back the middle class,” but was not specific. And she promised to let Bush’s tax cuts for the rich expire in 2010-11, to “let taxes rise on people making more than $250,000 a year.
  
  Obama upped the ante, calling for “a middle class tax cut” for anyone making less than $75,000 a year. His cut would offset their Social Security payroll taxes, which in many cases now take more money out of workers’ checks than income taxes.
  
  
• Clinton declared “I’m proud to stand with CWA against Bush’s attempts to privatize Social Security,” referring to an AFSCME-led campaign in 2005 that killed Bush’s scheme. “When I’m president, you won’t have to worry about that at all,” she added. Obama did not mention Social Security.
  
  
• In one of her few direct criticisms of her foe, Clinton declared that “I have a plan for universal health care, John Edwards had a plan for universal health care, but Sen. Obama does not have a plan for universal health care. I think that’s a core value of the Democratic Party. What do we stand for if we don’t stand for universal health care?”
  
  Obama retorted that “health care lobbyists spent $1 billion” to get the legislation they wanted. “I’m the candidate running who doesn’t take money from lobbyists,” he declared. Rebuffing Clinton’s criticism his health care plan doesn’t cover adults, Obama said under his plan “those who don’t get coverage through their jobs will get coverage” from the federal government “as good as coverage members of Congress get.”
  
  Obama also covered some specifics that Clinton did not:
  
  
• “The problems go beyond the Bush administration,” he warned. In an implicit criticism of Clinton--and her husband the ex-president--Obama said “both Democrats and Republicans looked the other way when the mortgage companies spent $185 million in lobbying” before the current credit crunch.
  
  
• Endorsed “Patriot Employer Act,” to give tax breaks to “firms that create jobs here, not send them overseas.” Without getting specific, Obama promised to “move against companies whose CEOs earn millions as the firms go belly up” and workers lose pensions and jobs. “That’ll change when I’m in the White House,” Obama said.
  
  
• Backed a plan, authored by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.)--whom Obama did not mention--to create a National Infrastructure Investment Bank to spend $2 billion over 10 years fixing roads, bridges and other facilities, and bringing internet broadband service to the entire nation. Broadband’s a favored CWA cause. Clinton backed it, too.
  
  “If we can spend $400 million a day rebuilding Baghdad, we can spend $10 billion to rebuild America and put Americans back to work,” Obama said. But all the plans and proposals “would be hard to accomplish” as long as the U.S. stays in Iraq, he declared. “I’m the only candidate who can stand up to McCain and say ‘no,’ to his 100-year commitment there,” the Illinoisan added--an implicit criticism of Clinton’s 2002 vote to authorize Bush’s use of force in Iraq.
  
  Clinton did not mention her vote to authorize force, but--in a reference to her service as First Lady--said that “We need a commander-in-chief who is ready from Day 1 to bring our sons and daughters home in a safe and responsible way” from the war. Neither was specific on how they would end U.S. involvement.