October 31, 2012
Washington DC Bureau
Obama Needs Massive Support from Unions To Win.
If President Barack Obama hopes to be re-elected for a second term as president, he will need — and receive — enormous support from the AFL-CIO and its members. The unions played the same rescue role in getting Obama elected to his first term in the White House.
Good news is coming from AFL-CIO national headquarters in Washington. D.C. It reported that about 450,00 people have agreed to participate in the new voter registration drive. The Teamsters, an affiliate of Change to Win, registered 25,000 more citizens in California alone. And 200,000, probably a majority of them, Obama supporters, have voted early nationwide.
The labor federation plans to have volunteers make house call to 5.5 million workers, both union and non-union. They will make 5.2 phone calls and distribute 2.2 million leaflets to potential voters.
The unions will focus on battleground states where Obama and Romney are in a virtual statistical tie at 47-49 percent each. Those states are Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which have a relatively large union population.
