Major Labor Unions Back Kerry Candidacy

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in an appearance with Kerry at a rally in Washington, D.C., ”The time has come to unite behind one man, one leader, one candidate.”

“John Kerry has stood up and fought for American workers when it counted for 20 years,” Sweeney said, adding the senator has a 91 percent lifetime voting record rating from the AFL-CIO.

Sixty-four labor unions make up the AFL-CIO, representing a broad group of professions that includes steel workers, airline pilots, musicians, truck drivers, restaurant servers, government workers and many other trades.

In his remarks at the rally, Kerry continued to criticize the policies of President Bush, specifically targeting the president’s economic policies.

“Today we stand united in a common cause and that common cause is not just to defeat George Bush, but it is to put our country back on track, on the road of prosperity, the road of fairness, the road of jobs,” Kerry said.

Kerry further said he would work to reverse the “wreckage of the Bush economy.”

The AFL-CIO endorsement comes two days after Kerry narrowly defeated Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., in the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary.

Both Edwards and Kerry have made improving the economy and creating jobs a central part of their pitch to Democratic voters.

Ahead of the Wisconsin contest, Edwards had intensified his criticism of Kerry for supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade pacts that Edwards and many labor unions blame for the loss of American jobs to foreign countries.

“Those trade deals were wrong,” Edwards said while campaigning in New York on Thursday. “They cost us too many jobs and lowered our standards.”

Edwards, a former trial attorney, had not yet run for public office when NAFTA was voted on in Congress in 1993. The pact was championed by a fellow Democrat, then-President Bill Clinton.

“I supported NAFTA but I don’t support what the Bush administration calls free trade,” Kerry said in a statement provided to the Online NewsHour. “And I don’t support the way that they’re negotiating FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas], because they aren’t standing up for labor or environmental protections.”

Kerry and Edwards have also been critical of the Bush administration over the issue of American companies “outsourcing” certain jobs to foreign workers.

The North Carolina senator has said he will give tax incentives to corporations that keep jobs in the United States and “will stop corporations from getting tax cuts for renouncing their citizenship.”

Kerry has said virtually the same thing, promising to “provide new tax cuts to create manufacturing jobs in America and close loopholes that reward moving jobs overseas.”

Both candidates have also advocated offering tax cuts or tax credits to American manufacturing companies that have operations in the United States.

Kerry and Edwards have both said they will repeal the portion of President Bush’s tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest Americans but keep tax cuts for the middle class.

President Bush has responded to the Democrat’s accusations, defending the performance of the economy during his administration and calling on Congress to make permanent existing tax cuts.

He has also said free trade agreements would open more markets for American products, which will help American farmers and business owners. He has further argued that the education reforms implemented in the No Child Left Behind Act would produce better-trained workers who would find higher-paying jobs.

President Bush’s Web site says that the White House-sponsored 2003 Jobs and Growth Act encourages “job-creating investment in America’s businesses by providing dividend and capital gains tax relief and giving small businesses incentives to grow.”

“I think the economy is growing, and I think it’s going to get stronger,” the president said Wednesday, according to the Washington Post.

The same Post report, however, said that the president will not endorse a report by White House Council of Economic Advisers that predicts the country will gain 2.6 million jobs this year.