Welcome to Ohio, Sen. McCain. Here’s What Workers Have to Say

Promoted from the forums. -Jeff

Last Friday, John McCain is arriving in Dayton, Ohio, to announce his running mate. He’s hoping to arrive to great fanfare and win over southern Ohioans. However, working families have a message: It’s time to take a closer look at McCain and his record.

The AFL-CIO is reaching out to 45,000 union activists in Ohio with a new video. The video gives some workers in Dayton and southern Ohio the chance to have their say on McCain and where he’d take the country. Here are just a few examples:

"John McCain is out of touch with the middle class worker in this country."

–Dale Herzog, St. Mary’s, Ohio

"His ideas are just the same ones that Bush has had for eight years."

–Norma Schlosser, Kettering, Ohio

"Everything that the American working man stands for, John McCain is against."

–Wesley Wells, Dayton, Ohio

In Ohio and around the country, union volunteers will go door to door next week to educate members and their families about McCain and his record.

McCain has a lot to explain to the working men and women who are looking for solutions to the economic problems they face: stagnant wages, disappearing jobs and a broken health care system, for starters.

Ohio has been particularly hard-hit over the past several years on the economic front, with its jobless rate hitting a 15-year high. According to reports by the Economic Policy Institute, Ohio lost nearly 50,000 jobs over a decade due to NAFTA and has lost more than 66,000 jobs to China since 2001.

Ohio’s housing market has also been hit hard, with foreclosures shooting up 88 percent from 2006 to 2007. More than 150,000 homes were foreclosed in Ohio in 2007, and the housing crisis isn’t getting any easier for families. Southern Ohio may face the loss of 8,000 more jobs if DHL closes operations at its facility in Wilmington.

What McCain has been offering to Ohio so far isn’t going to cut it. His policies and priorities reflect a continuation of the Bush administration. McCain claimed we’ve made “great progress economically” and that the last eight years have been “a pretty good prosperous time.” When it comes to trade, health care, Social Security and the economy, his proposed policies are sadly out of touch.

Ohio’s working families have gotten a raw deal from the Bush administration and its economic agenda that has helped big corporations and left everyone else behind. Will McCain continue to offer more of the same—or will he start fighting for the rest of us?

That’s what Ohio’s workers want to know, and they deserve an answer.