On Friday, January 30th, President Barack Obama reversed three Bush-era anti-worker executive orders and created a Cabinet-level task force to rebuild the nation’s middle class. In a White House ceremony this morning attended by SMWIA General President Michael Sullivan and other union leaders, Obama signed three executive orders that reverse a series of orders by then-President George W. Bush.
The three new executive orders:
- Require federal service contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
- Reverse a Bush order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
- Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
Before signing the orders, Obama said:
We cannot have a strong middle class without strong labor unions. We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests.
Obama also announced creation of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families to develop and coordinate policies to rebuild the nation’s middle class and lift the poor out of poverty. Vice President Joe Biden will chair the task force.
The task force has set up a new website, www.strongmiddleclass.gov/, where workers can submit stories and ideas about how the economy has affected them and ideas on changing it.
This is the second consecutive day that Obama has shown his support for American workers. Yesterday, he signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which strengthens laws to ensure equal pay for equal work.