WIN Week In Review February 15-17, 2008

By Doug Cunningham

GM is putting the finishing touches on its apparent strategic plan to destroy traditional UAW wages and benefits. It’s offering buyouts to all 74,000 U.S. GM-UAW members. It's an effort to get as many as possible to leave so they can be replaced by workers earning half the wages. The drive to destroy good U.S. auto jobs – GM calls it cutting costs – brings to an end a decades-long, union-won economic benefit to working families that lifted hundreds of thousands of people into the U.S. middle class.

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As Barack Obama picked up two big national union endorsements – the UFCW and the SEIU – Wisconsin has become the latest Democratic presidential battleground state. Jesse Russell reports.
Senator Barack Obama took time to hit back at critics at an auto plant in Janesville, Wisconsin on Wednesday. The Illinois Senator, currently battling former First Lady, Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination, laid out his economic plan before members of the United Auto Workers Union. He took Senator Clinton head on in his speech, criticizing her for supporting President Bill Clinton, her husband, passing the North American Free Trade Agreement:
[Obama]: "In the years after her husband signed NAFTA, Senator Clinton would go around talking about how great it was and how many benefits it would bring. Now that she is running for President, she says we need a time out on trade; no one knows when this time out will end."
Obama said that if he is elected President, he will not sign a trade agreement unless it offers protections for the environment and U.S. workers.

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On Thursday Senator Hillary Clinton won a closely contested New Mexico caucus that had been too close to call. At a big Texas political rally Senator Hillary Clinton said she feels the struggles of working people and is determined to make changes that will help us if she’s elected president.
[Hillary Clinton]: “I know from what people tell me that a lot of really hard working folks are concerned. You know, they’re workin’ as hard as they can but they don’t feel like they’re getting ahead."
Hillary Clinton says one of the biggest differences between her and Barack Obama is on health care.
[Hillary Clinton2]: “Senator Obama won’t come forward with a universal health care plan, but I have, I will and with your help we will achieve universal health care in America!”

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Hundreds of Teamsters rallied outside the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco Tuesday, as the union awaits a decision on Bush’s Mexican trucks program. The Teamsters have challenged the program as illegal, in violation of congressional-set safety requirements and a ban on funding the program. The Teamsters say Mexican trucks are unsafe and their drivers aren’t as well-regulated as U.S. drivers.

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The American Federation of Government Employees’ says staffing levels at the Social Security Administration are the lowest since 1972, thanks to Bush budget cuts. The AFGE’s Witold Sweirczynsnki.

[Sweirczynsnki]: "In order to stretch out a limited budget, SSA has engaged in what we think are some questionable tactics to reduce service to the public. One of them is to accelerate office closings. The population affected by these closings are seniors, widows, the disabled, and the poor."