Obama cites labor’s role in U.S. economy amid trade rift

President Obama is looking to reassure workers he’s got their back just days after he finalized a proposed trade deal hated by labor.

During a speech at a White House summit on working Americans, the president drew a direct link between drops in union membership and the stagnation of most workers’ wages.

“I have seen firsthand how we are heard – and how we make change – when workers like us stick together”, he said. Most working men and women know what the latest data shows, the recession might be over but prosperity is not trickling down to the middle class. This is leading to widening income inequality and workers believing they have no voice at their workplace. Sanchez. He emphasized the many benefits today’s workers have as a result of collective bargaining, including safer working conditions, 40-hour work week, increased salaries, paid sick leave, health care benefits, and retirement pensions.

There was a get together at the White House yesterday which attracted nearly no media attention amidst the various food fights of the day, dubbed the “Worker Voice” summit.

His comments were made to a gathering of top Democrats and labor leaders, including a few of those who’ve been the most vocally critical of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a huge 12-country trade deal that most unions vehemently oppose.

During the Summit, U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez asked Sen.

While the nation has recovered from the financial meltdown of 2008-09, Obama said that challenges remain in an economy that in recent decades has shifted from traditional domestic industries to automated globalized businesses that rely on the Internet. “I don’t call it the RTW”. The coalition includes franchisees and other small business as well as business groups like global Franchise Association.

Both the Administration and the DOL have been heavily promoting the Summit. So much so that conservative The Heritage Foundation hosted its own summits with the help of the Center for Worker Freedom, the Center for Union Facts, and the Center for Independent Employees. Unfortunately, when the White House rolls out the red carpet for them like this it only reinforces the fantasy they are selling to their members. Rojas and thousand of his fellow Latino farm workers became involved in the longest labor hearing in California history. “In order to do that, workers need a voice”. The ad ran Wednesday in the New York Post and the Washington, D.C. edition of The Wall Street Journal.