Labor Union Blog

Sen. Barack Obama has chosen as his running mate a friend of working families in Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.). Biden earned a 100 percent voting record on working family issues in 2007 and a lifetime record of 85 percent.

In addition to working-family-friendly positions on health care, Social Security, Medicare and other critical issues, Biden is a staunch supporter of workers’ freedom to form unions and “bargain with their employers for a better life for themselves and their families.” A co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, Biden told a Fire Fighters union presidential forum last year: “There is a middle class for one reason and only one reason in America. Organized labor. That’s why it exists.”

The poll released this week by the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI) not only shows strong public support for the Employee Free Choice Act but shows overwhelming bipartisan backing for such key parts of a working families’ agenda as expanded federal health care coverage for America’s children.

Jefrey Pollock, president of Global Strategy Group, which conducted the poll, says:

Middle-class households feel the crunch of tough economic times—they are pessimistic in their national outlook and troubled by the economy and gas prices. They don’t know what their leaders in Washington are up to on their behalf, but they have definite opinions about what they would like them to be doing.