Joe Sixpack demands answers from anti-union McCain & Co.

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.usw.org/2008/10/08/joe-six-pack-demands-answers-from-anti-union-mccain-co/

Posted October 8, 2008 at 12:47 pm, in From the President


By Leo W. Gerard

International President

Sarah ”Joe-Sixpack” Palin pulled her labor union roots out of the frozen Alaskan soil and started shaking them at normally union-allergic Republican crowds from the day John McCain announced her as his running mate.

Recently, she redoubled her efforts to cast herself not as a governor and member of an elite American family earning more than $165,000 a year, but as Joe Sixpack and someone whose membership in a union enabled her to secure health insurance for her family. Her confounding statements reveal John McCain as a hypocrite on the issue of unionization.

McCain, who has condemned unions as “serious excesses” and said government workers are “crippled by the fine print of the latest union contract,” introduced Palin by bragging about her union background — as if he approved. “The person I am about to introduce to you,” he said, “was a union member and is married to a union member.”

After that, Palin repeatedly put her husband, Todd, on display, telling crowds that he is “a proud member of the United Steelworkers Union.” Then, last week, Palin went on talk radio and said that her family was without health insurance or had to figure out how to buy it themselves, until, “Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs.”

That makes perfect sense since unionized workers are 28 percent more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance than nonunion workers, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. And employers with unionized workforces pay a greater share of the cost, lowering deductibles and co-payments for union families, the EPI study found.

What doesn’t make sense is for the anti-union McCain campaign to be boasting about the benefits of union membership. Like many Republicans, McCain has made it clear that he feels about unions the way an Alaskan aerial hunter does about wolves – best when dead.

FULL story at link.