Democrats line up support from labor + WHERE THEY STAND ON TRADE

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.thestate.com/presidential-politics/story/168933.html

Posted on Mon, Sep. 10, 2007
CHOOSING A PRESIDENT
Democrats line up support from labor
By WAYNE WASHINGTON - [e-mail]

McCORMICK — In a basement room of a conference center here last week, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico was mingling, shaking hands and thanking folks for coming to hear him speak.


Democratic presidential candidate Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

The governor, a large man with an intense gaze, had made a positive impression.

Richardson is a Democrat, and the hands he shook were those of union workers, most of whom see Democrats as friends.

Those “friends,” however, haven’t always been so friendly to labor’s opposition to free trade. Many Democrats running for president have supported free trade policies.

Those policies, many economists say, have been job producers for the country as a whole but job killers in blue-collar swaths of the South, where labor is cheap but still not as cheap as in parts of Asia, Mexico and Central America.

Deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, are viewed by organized labor as paving the way for plant owners to shut down U.S. facilities while opening new ones in countries where labor is cheaper.

FULL story and scorecard at link.