Source:
LA TimesBy Tom Hamburger
Columbus, Ohio -- The United Food and Commercial Workers Union, one of the nation's largest labor organizations and a force in battleground state politics, voted today to support Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for president.
The move is a blow to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose campaign had also sought the union's backing. The UFCW is a prize because it is one of the largest in the country and is particularly influential in states with upcoming primaries: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
In Ohio, the union has 70,000 members who work in supermarkets and food processing.
That makes the union more influential than even the United Steelworkers, which now represents 56,000 workers in the state. Both campaigns have been aggressively courting the steelworkers union nationally, because of its influence in all three states. But as recently as this past weekend, the steelworkers union leadership decided to remain neutral.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-ufcw15feb15,1,1142903.story