By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI) - As expected, it just took time for emotions to cool and to round up the needed votes, and the AFL-CIO on the afternoon of June 26 announced it endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for the presidency.

Federation President John J. Sweeney said Obama got the votes of members of the federation's General Board representing unions with more than two-thirds of the AFL-CIO's 9.5 million members. He polled board members by fax and conference call.

"In so many ways - on jobs, health care, gas prices and the war in Iraq - our country is headed in the wrong direction," Sweeney said. "Obama has proven from his days as an organizer, to his time in the Senate and his historic run for the presidency, that he's leading the fight to turn around America."

Sweeney called Obama "a champion for working families who knows what it's going to take to create an economy that works for everyone, not just Big Oil, Big Pharma, insurance companies, giant mortgage lenders, speculators" and the rich.

In announcing that AFL-CIO Building Trades Department has unanimously endorsed Obama, department President Mark Ayers said the trades would attempt to show to members "the stark differences between (Obama's) view of America and that of Senator John McCain - whose candidacy, in our minds, is simply a warmed-over version of the anti-worker, anti union tenure of George W. Bush."

The AFL-CIO endorsement was not unanimous. The Machinists voted "present" and IAM President Thomas Buffenbarger and Transportation Communications Union/IAM President Robert Scardelletti still have questions for Obama. The Machinists and other industrial unions have large segments of blue-collar lower-income male voters who favored Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) over Obama in the Democratic primaries.

"Blue-collar Democrats are born skeptics," Buffenbarger said. "Their skepticism grew during this campaign. And to turn skeptics into supporters takes more than a perfunctory knock on the door of the House of Labor." Scardelletti and Buffenbarger said "now is not the right time for an endorsement."

"We look forward to a productive conversation with Obama about policies that can resonate with blue-collar Democrats," Buffenbarger added. "As they demonstrated in state after state, blue-collar Democrats respond overwhelmingly to a candidate who will fight to improve their lives. And they are just not there yet. Nor are we."

Even without IAM, major hurdles to the Obama endorsement were overcome within the prior week when AFSCME, the AFL-CIO's largest union with 1.4 million members, endorsed Obama, followed by the 700,000-member Communications Workers on June 24. AFSCME previously backed Clinton and CWA was neutral. IBEW, the Bakery and Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTG&M) and the California Nurses Association also issued separate Obama endorsements.

The AFL-CIO endorsement is significant because it lets member unions - who split their endorsements between Obama, Clinton and Edwards before switching to Obama - mobilize their get-out-the-vote and voter information campaigns for Obama. And the AFL-CIO endorsement paves the way for the federations and NEA to coordinate their efforts.

The AFL-CIO said its top-tier states this year will be Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But its drive will also cover 60 U.S. House races, "every viable Senate race" and 510 races overall in 24 states. The federation aims to put 250,000 volunteers in the field, make 300,000 home visits even before Labor Day, make over 300,000 phone calls and distribute more than 2 million fliers. It already distributed 1.5 million worksite fliers and 500,000 mailers criticizing McCain's economic record.

It also launched a new website, www.meetObama08.com, to go with its "McCain exposed" website.

The federation estimated individual unions will spend approximately $200 million on politics this year, besides its own $54 million get-out-the-vote, voter registration, voter protection and non-partisan information campaigns, presenting the positions of Obama and McCain on a wide range of issues of interest to workers.

It will emphasize four issues in its drive this fall: Universal, affordable, comprehensive health care with government as regulator and backup provider, fair trade not free trade, retirement security, and the Employee Free Choice Act. EFCA will be labor's top priority in the next 111th Congress.

"Leadership can re-engage disenfranchised Americans and bring our country together," the AFL-CIO board's statement said. "Obama has advocated a change of direction for our nation that mirrors the priorities of the labor movement."

The Employee Free Choice Act, which Obama - a former organizer - strongly supports and McCain opposes, would help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing campaigns and in bargaining for initial contracts. It would do so by writing "card-check recognition" - automatic recognition of the union when it achieves a majority of signed election authorization cards in a workplace - into law.