Culinary union endorsed Obama without a vote of the workers?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a.5qn_H6lZHg&refer=us

Christine Ackerman, 45, a food server at Café Bellagio, said she supported Clinton because ``she's the most viable person to get into the White House.'' She said she was ``appalled'' that her union endorsed Obama without a vote of the workers.

Is still think Edwards would have been the candidate to endorse.

asking the workers who they supported.

Well, I'm proud of them for voting their own best interests, and supporting Sen. Clinton.

It's just as crazy as that teachers union that filed the lawsuit about the polling places on the strip without the input of the teachers.

I tell ya... our politics are truly messed up.

Dumb me. I just thought the union leadership decided which candidate would best serve their needs. Can someone elucidate? Is this the norm with unions; that they vote for or against the endorsement?

popular vote for candidates.

committee is out of line, it will be recalled in the next union election. Your generalizations are not valid. Each union has its own constitution. The union owes nothing to you or me. The union committee probably had a tough decision. It has not been in this position before. Nevada has never been an important part in the process. We don't know what happened inside the union process. That is the concern of the membership, not us.

process for the endorsement.Why so touchy? Can you name a union that takes a popular vote before endorsing?

do the business of the union. Endorsements may or may not be part of the business. The union's constitution determines that far in advance of any endorsement.

The endorsement is presented to their members, so they know which candidate most closely aligns with the union's positions. Members can consider the endorsement along with any other personal issues they may have. Any candidate that considers the endorsement to be a lock on every members' vote is naive.

one for 30 years and on was the executive board of my local for 8 years.The OP asked if it's true that Unions don't endorse by poplar vote.You jumped all over me for posting that Unions don't take a popular vote to determine endorsments .I still don't get what you're posts to me have to do with any of that.

I didn't mean to blast you, but I've been reading a lot of union bashing this afternoon, and I've been trying to let people know about union constitutions. That of course made me overly sensitive. I apologize.

It's hard to judge intention on the internets.

a surrogate appeared before the committee. The committee then compared each candidates positions to the union's. Apparently, Obama matched the best. Its not unusual to have union members vote against their own interests. Reagan developed a following of white, males by using the "macho America" concept.

Unions have lost a lot of influence in the last 20 years. Perhaps in the next few years Americans will rediscover what unions can do for them. Unions stood up to corporations. Unions did not cede corporations the insane profits and salaries that plague the United States now. Those tough, white, male conservatives just bailed, rather than stand up against corporations.

it would be hard NOT to endorse Edwards.

country is ready to become a lot more progressive that she suggests.

The union bosses can endorse who ever they want: but that is no guarantee that the rank and file will uniformly vote that way, even in a public caucus.

was made up of union leadership. My daughter, who's a Culinary member, talked to several dozen co-workers. Almost all of them resented that " we had no say about it."

My Dem strategist friend concurs that endorsements have very little effect in the primary (and apparently even in caucuses.) In the General, it's a differnt matter. But people don't like to be told whom to vote for.

Now D. Taylor, Culinary's top local official, is backpedaling furiously. He's blaming it on making the endorsement too late, and also saying "The decision wasn't mine to make. It came from the International." The latter statement seems to be flatly untrue.

IMO, the Culinary shouldn't have endorsed _anyone_ in the caucus, but concentrated on contract negotiations, representation, and its other primary responsibilities. Now its vaunted influence is diminished, and it'll be hard to get back.

union's leadership might be. If the union does not have provision in their constitution for endorsements, then this leadership group is in some trouble. On the other hand, if the union's constitution has a endorsement procedure, the membership has little to complain about, if the procedure was followed.

Somebody obviously made the call to endorse on the basis they thought he was going to win in NH and then got it badly wrong. they were being opportunist. Had Hillary been winning NH earlier in the week, i bet they would have endorsed her.

They planned that endorsement the night of NH, and it was leaked to the press but when Hillary unexpectedly took Nh, they still had to endorse and put themselves in a postion.

Made themselves look like idiots.

I would have to think that they understood what was at stake when they endorsed. Members are hit with a lot of public relations information. I doubt that the union's committee did a lot more than making their endorsement public. I would imagine that union members can find out the criteria that was used to make the endorsement.

no matter WHO they ended up endorsing - even if the result were Hillary - I'd still be apalled...

This was an endorsement to the membership from the leadership. I would assume that they had a committee that used criteria important to the union to evaluate the candidates.

I can agree that its not acceptable to have leadership pull a name out of the air to endorse. But this is a big union and its should have a committee in place that determines which candidate most closely aligns to the union's positions. It then, informs the membership based on that criteria. The union endorsement is for its members and others who consider the union's position important. It is not intended to be representative of the membership's position. Really, a good endorsement only considers the candidates positions, which in this case were not too far apart.

I personally wonder if the union even considered not endorsing because each of the candidates would be acceptable to the union. I'm thinking that the candidates put some pressure on the union to endorse. Endorsing in that situation would bother me.

After what the Bush/Clinton/DLC trade policies have done to workers in this country.

to benefit workers. How many times do you need to be told it's fixable?

Update your hit list!

It was built from the ground up to favor corporations over workers. A few tweaks around the edges will not fix it.

No matter how much you polish a turd, at the end of the day it's still a turd.

what is written can be changed, especially where we should have a real honest to God Dem majority, gaining a few more seats this next election cycle.

Corporations have too much interest in keeping things just as they are. Not only do they "own" most of the Repubs, they own a good share of the Dems, too.

Don't expect a candidate who takes piles of money from Wall Street to "fix" something like NAFTA. It was created to screw over working people. No amount of "tweaking" it, even with a Dem "majority" (many of whom are deeptly indebted to corporate donors) will EVER fix it.

It's a bad treaty, written to keep corporations in control and working people on their knees.

Most endorsements are by consensus of the "higher-ups", and have nothing to do with polling the union members.

part of their local constitution. Most likely, this union had criteria and Obama fit more closely than Clinton or Edwards.

I said that union endorsements don't usually take into account a polling of the members. I'm sure each union has different criteria by which they select a candidate to endorse.

their choice of candidates every day without consent from members.
So there is no problem the same union chiefs endorsing whom they choose.

Unite Here has been in a dispute with Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign because its pollster and chief strategist, Mark Penn, heads a public relations firm that has represented the Cintas Corporation, a large industrial laundry company that has vigorously battled the union's efforts to organize 17,000 Cintas workers.



Penn's firm, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide -- with 2,000 employees and $300 million a year in revenue -- owns BKSH & Associates, the major lobbying firm chaired by Charles R. Black Jr. That's right, Black, counselor to Republican presidents, reports to Clinton's top strategist.

The connections get even more entangled. Burson-Marsteller is a subsidiary of WPP Group, a London-based advertising and PR giant that owns many of the biggest names on K Street. These include Quinn Gillespie & Associates, Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, Timmons & Co., Ogilvy Government Relations Worldwide (formerly the Federalist Group), Public Strategies Inc., Dewey Square Group and Hill & Knowlton.

To be more precise, Penn's parent company employs as lobbyists and advisers an ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee (Edward W. Gillespie), a former House GOP leader (Robert S. Walker), a top GOP fundraiser (Wayne L. Berman), and the former media adviser to President Bush (Mark McKinnon).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/19/AR2007021900972.html

doesn't surprise me in the least...

even if they would have supported Hillary - the union bosses hardly care what their underlings REALLY think when it comes right down to it...

:hi: pssst......over here :hide: noooooooooooooo over there :hide:

:rofl:

and they are still looking for him!

some reporter must have mentioned he wanted a statement about Rezko's indictment, and RonBama was up, up and away!

Left his team without saying a word.. what a putz!