Union tide turning for Obama

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/ap/2008/05/15/union-tide-turning-for-obama

May 15 2008 5:12PM EDT

The union tide is turning toward Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama, but cracks are showing inside the labor movement as its leaders grapple with internal and external strife as the nomination race drags on.

More and more labor unions are lining up behind the Illinois senator, who on Thursday picked up the 600,000-member United Steelworkers union and the personal endorsement of Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America.

"I'm convinced that Senator Obama's message of hope and 'change we can believe in' has resonated across our country," said Cohen, whose union will not endorse until June.

Those endorsements, including recent ones by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the American Federation of Government Employees, are helping Obama cement his front-runner status against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama supporters hope his union endorsers will help bring in the white, blue-collar Democrats his campaign has been courting. The Service Employees International Union, the nation's largest, is already calling Obama "the presumptive nominee."

But there is still a major union plum to be had, the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor organization.

The AFL-CIO and its 56 unions expect to spend an estimated $200 million on the presidential and congressional elections. However, the labor federation is still nowhere close to making an endorsement, focusing its energies instead on presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

FULL story at link.

:headbang: