Obama's fundraising collides with his rhetoric

[William769]

Union says senator did little to save jobs


GALESBURG, Ill. - Maytag workers whose jobs were shipped to Mexico serve as consistent characters in Barack Obama's stump speech. He employs their stories in railing against corporations that use trade pacts to replace well-paid union workers with low-cost foreign ones.

It is a ready applause line for the Illinois presidential hopeful, one that he has been reciting almost verbatim since he was a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2004, when appliance giant Maytag was in the process of shutting a refrigerator plant here, putting 1,600 people out of work.

But the union that represented most of those Galesburg workers isn't impressed with Obama's advocacy. It has endorsed his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Its leaders say they wish he had done more about their members' plight.

What rankles some is what Obama didn't do even as he expressed solidarity four years ago with workers mounting a desperate fight to save their jobs.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-galesburg_obama_webfeb01,0,4286527.story