Obama Voters At My Workplace

The people at my workplace overwhelming voted for Obama. ( I wonder how the job search is going for most of them) A friend of mine at work voted for Obama. When Obama “won” the Nobel Peace Prize, he wasted no time coming to me to gloat. When I asked him what Obama did to earn the prize, he had no answer.

We don’t talk politics often because we are friends and I figure what would be the point. He will continue to think Obama is god like no matter what the facts are.

My friend isn’t the kool-aide drinking kind of liberal. He does have a little common sense and we do agree on some things like all the waste in welfare. We both personally know people gaming the system. We agree they all should be drug tested before collecting welfare.

My friend and I also agree we pay too much in taxes and there are programs that could be done away with.  I would say he is almost a blue dog Democrat but not quite.  He is against gun ownership, falsely believing crime is higher because of it. We agree child molesters should serve life with no parole or be executed.

Since we haven’t talked about Obama in a very long time, I have no idea if he has had a change of heart or not. I have been tempted to ask him what he thinks of the hope and change now but I’m not sure I want to hear his answer.

My workplace is a union shop. UAW. However it’s not like the big three. We make a fraction of what they make with less benefits.  We have never gone on strike.  There had been times we have forgone a pay raise to help out the company. We also gave up our pension so they could pay for the waste treatment cleanup.

Our contract is up in Dec. The company wants us to postpone negotiations for one year. The union put it to a vote. We all know work trickles in and we have people laid off who will most likely never be called back. So I was surprised when the vote came back no.

I immediately went to the union president and told him I want out. The union is an embarrassment and just greedy. I was told I couldn’t get out of the union.

The company tried a different tack. They had a plant wide meeting to explain why they wanted to postpone contract talks.

What they had to say was an eye opener. They almost didn’t make payroll a few times, they had to borrow money for the first time in their history to keep the doors open, they wasn’t paying suppliers on time, customers were slow in paying for work done, profits dropped  50% after Obama was elected. We are now 25% below  what they used to be, and all management took a 25-35% pay cut they will most likely never get back.

The main gripe of the union members isn’t the pay. It’s the health insurance.  It seems some have actually paid attention to what is going to happen. Our premiums will not go down $2000 a year as Obama said they would but go up. The members want some kind of guarantee they will not increase as though the company has a say into what the insurance companies charge us.

The company repeated every time someone brought up the subject, no one knows what is going to happen for sure. Congress passed a 2,000 page health bill that hasn’t been read and slowly things are being found out about it that does not look good. The full impact wont happen till 2014. My friend the Obama voter was nodding his head in agreement.  I almost wanted to slap him. Its people like him are the reason we are in this mess to begin with.

This still didn’t satisfy a couple of the members.  I’m not sure what they want. Maybe they want the company to absorb the cost of the rising premiums. The union is a fraud. They demand all kinds of things then when people end up losing their job because of the higher costs, they blame the company??

I told one person the whole insurance premiums is moot anyway because the insurance companies will be run out of business as was the purpose of Obama’s  so we will be forced to receive rationed ObamaCare.

I was glad the company had this meeting with the Obama supporters. Its obvious the company hasn’t done as well since the Democrats took over both houses of congress in 2007.

Our next vote on the contract talks is in a couple of weeks. I suspect this time the vote will be different. If it isn’t, then it will show me Obama voters are truly brain-dead and there is no hope for them.