Unions still waiting for Obama to deliver

WASHINGTON — For eight years under George W. Bush, union officials barely set foot inside the White House. But 10 days after President Obama took office, the nation's most powerful labor leaders mingled in the Blue Room, moments after the new president, a man they helped put there, signed a string of executive orders undoing Bush's policies.

The mood was euphoric.

"He walked in with the biggest smile," James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said of Obama, "saying, 'Welcome back to your White House.' "

Today that euphoria is giving way to a mixture of frustration and unease, as union leaders grow concerned the Obama White House has not delivered as much as they expected.

Some criticize him for not pushing hard enough or moving fast enough on their issues, while others blame the deep recession and Republican opposition for his failure to do more.

Obama has delayed a push for the unions' No. 1 legislative priority, a measure to make it easier for workers to organize. He faces potential conflict with unions on trade and on how fast to push for immigration reform. And on health care, friction between labor and the White House is spilling out into the open.

In response, Obama is renewing his courtship of the labor movement, whose members worked as foot soldiers in his campaign and spent August doggedly defending his health plan at congressional town meetings. Today, the president will mark Labor Day by speaking at an AFL-CIO picnic in Cincinnati. The next week, he will address the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh.

"He gets an A for effort and an incomplete for results," the incoming president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, said of Obama.

While labor leaders, including the current AFL-CIO president, John Sweeney, say they still strongly support the president — especially his handling of the economic crisis — Trumka set off an uproar last week when he warned that unions would not support a health-care bill that lacks a government-backed insurance plan.

It was a shot across the bow to the White House, which is weighing whether to compromise on the so-called public option.

Another top union leader, Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, cautioned that if Obama abandons the public option, "it will be harder to gin our people up on other issues."

McEntee said he had noticed a shift in sentiment even since July, when 14 union leaders spent 45 minutes in the White House Roosevelt Room with the president and top aides like David Axelrod.

"He said, 'You've stood shoulder to shoulder with me,' — and I'm paraphrasing here — 'I want you there, and I'm going to fight for you,' " McEntee said.

"When we left, I think we were all on maybe not cloud nine, but cloud four. I shook hands with all the staff; Axelrod was there. This was the person we elected; this was our president with a voice. It felt good."

And now? McEntee paused. "Well," he said, "not as good."

Blue-collar workers have long been a little bit suspicious of Obama, who has never quite been able to demonstrate he is one of them.

Still, they stood strongly behind him once he became the Democratic presidential nominee, contributing money, running phone banks and knocking on doors in critical swing states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.

The two main labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, said unions and their political-action committees had spent nearly $450 million in the presidential race. The addition of Joseph Biden to the ticket as Obama's running mate helped with his union bona fides. So did the endorsement of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

Today, Biden continues to play an important role as a link between the unions and the president. But Kennedy's recent passing is a significant loss, one that may force Obama to work that much harder to win union support for any health-care compromise he might make, said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist.

"Ted Kennedy was an incredibly important Good Housekeeping seal of approval, and if he lent his prestige to whatever compromise Obama felt he had to make, that would mean an awful lot to people in the labor movement," Garin said.

Obama, he added, must "persuade labor unions and others that his commitment is to getting it right in the interest of the average working person."

Still, Obama may have an easier time with some labor leaders than others. Hoffa, for instance, said the public option was not a make-or-break provision for him; he is open to legislation containing "a trigger" to create a public plan if private efforts to expand coverage failed.

Dennis Rivera, the point man on health care for the Service Employees International Union, said unions would have to be flexible. "Politics is the art of the possible," he said, adding that Obama's "heart is in the right place."

Still, there are tensions between unions and the White House on matters beyond health care. Trade is an especially contentious issue; unions are irked that Obama has backed away from his campaign pledge to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And the United Steelworkers, which represents tire workers, is pressing Obama to punish China now that the U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled China is hurting American manufacturers by inundating the market with cheap tires.

Union leaders have also been patient with Obama, both on immigration (they want legislation offering a path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants) and the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill to make organizing easier. In the July meeting in the Roosevelt Room, Obama made a strong pitch that health care should come first.

Labor leaders were willing to accept that strategy, said David E. Bonior, a former Michigan congressman and chairman of the National Labor Coordinating Committee, an umbrella group.

But with Obama planning a major speech Wednesday before Congress to lay out his priorities in a health bill, Bonior said, union members want some reassurance he will stick his neck out for their priorities.

"They don't want him to leave it up to seven or eight committee chairmen," Bonior said. "They want him to be the leader and to fight for this stuff."