Obamaland: Where Every Job Is Above Average

President Barack Obama gave the AFL-CIO what it wanted to hear Tuesday: a populist attack on corporate greed and promises to rebuild America’s middle class through a strong labor movement.

“I refuse to let America go back to the culture of irresponsibility…back to an economy with soaring CEO salaries and shrinking middle-class incomes; back to the days when banks made reckless decisions that hurt Wall Street and Main Street alike,” Obama told AFL-CIO members at their national convention in Pittsburgh.

The president’s rhetoric was similar in tone to documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, whose scathing new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, was shown at a union-sponsored screening the night before Obama’s speech. Obama didn’t go as far as Moore—he didn’t say capitalism was evil—but he did say “the fundamental test of our time” is “whether we will let America become a nation of the very rich and the very poor, of the haves and the have-nots.”

The alternative, he said, was to “remain true to the promise of this country and build a future where the success of all of us is built on the success of each of us.”

“That’s the future we’ve been working to build from the moment I took office,” Obama said.

In this future, everyone will be able to get a good job with good benefits—“jobs that are not just a source of income, but a source of self-respect,” Obama said.

To get there, a strong labor movement is needed, he said.

“That’s why I named Hilda Solis, the daughter of union members, as our new labor secretary. Hilda and I know that whether we’re in good economic times or bad, labor is not the problem—labor is part of the solution,” he said.

To help labor, Obama said he has been reversing and replacing old antilabor executive orders and policies. For example, the president wants to require project labor agreements on federal construction projects valued at more than $25 million. PLAs favor unionized construction companies over nonunion ones and will increase the cost of construction projects, according to Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade association for nonunion contractors.

The president reaffirmed his support for the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would allow unions to organize workplaces by getting a majority of workers to sign cards saying they want to be represented by a union. No secret-ballot election would be necessary.

Obama also took a trip down memory lane, recounting the labor movement’s glory days, where “the battle for opportunity” was “fought in places like Pennsylvania.”

“It was here that Pittsburgh railroad workers rose up in a great strike,” he said. “It was here that Homestead steelworkers took on Pinkerton guards at Carnegie’s mill.”

That was then. This is now. Today organized labor represents only 7.6 percent of the private-sector workforce. A recent Gallup Poll found that only 48 percent of Americans approve of unions—the lowest approval rating since Gallup started asking the question in the 1930s.

Unions remain a powerful force in the Democratic Party, but the president has a long way to go before he’ll convince most Americans that unions are the key to their future prosperity.