Richardson, Biden court the Iowa Labor Council

by Rick Pearson

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — New Mexico's Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson said today that he would use the presidency to more than double the percentage of the nation's workforce that are union members while White House rival Sen. Joseph Biden pledged to rebuild the middle class and organized labor.

The two contenders, along with former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), spoke before sun-drenched cloudless blue skies at a family picnic hosted by the Northwest Iowa Labor Council and local Democrats.

While several hundred watched the Clintons' pre-lunchtime speeches, the crowd had dwindled in about half to watch afternoon speeches by Richardson, Biden, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), acting as a surrogate for Illinois colleague Sen. Barack Obama, who was campaigning in New Hampshire.

"My name's Joe Biden and I'm one of the 800 candidates running for president," said the Delaware senator, who was the last politician to speak at the gathering. "I think you've probably heard from all."

Both Richardson and Biden used the gathering of union families to speak as much about helping organized labor as they did in touting their foreign relations credentials to lead a country beset by war and international tension.

Not all of the union members were satisfied with the speeches.

"I'd like to know one specific union job that any of these politicians has negotiated," said Don Hilton, a retired union painter from Sioux City. "I'm tired of these politicians who come here and just say what you want to hear."

Richardson said he was setting a goal of 20 percent of the nation's workforce to be made up of union members by the end of a first presidential term, compared to about 8 percent currently. He said he would accomplish such a move through pushing federal laws that would make it easier for unions to organize workers and to seek an end to right-to-work laws.

"Starting with Labor Day, this is when you start seriously looking at who should be the winner of the Iowa caucuses," Richardson said.

"What you should judge is not the 10-point platform but what has this individual done for working men and women already," he said, citing laws and initiatives during his time as governor on behalf of prevailing wage, collective bargaining rights and public employee union contracts.

Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador in the Clinton administration, also stressed his continued work in negotiating with foreign governments.

He said negotiations he held with officials in the North Korean government several months ago to secure the remains of six Korean War-era veterans who were missing in action also involved discussions about that country's nuclear program.

"I brought back six of our remains of our MIA's from the Korean War five months ago and we got the North Koreans to stop building their nuclear reactor," Richardson said. "That wasn't just George Bush. That was Bill Richardson. I was there."

Richardson said afterward that in addition to securing the remains he was part of a bipartisan effort in which "our agenda was also to get (North Korea) to stop, to shut down their nuclear reactor, Yongbyon. They told me they would do it if we fixed a problem they had with some frozen assets.

"I'm not taking credit for it, but I'm saying I pushed it and it happened," he said. "And I've known the North Koreans for years."

Biden said his role as president "will not be to stop the slide in American labor" but to "rebuild an American labor movement" that he said is key to restoring a middle class beset by wages that he contended have not grown in inflation adjusted dollars since 1972.

"White collar workers have finally figured out the only reason they have health care, the only reason they have job protection, the only reason they have safety requirements on the job is because of organized labor," he said. "But they've learned one other thing: They've learned the companies that they counted on to keep their word have thrown them overboard."

Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, focused much of his talk on bringing an end to the Iraq War and his proposal to divide that nation into sectarian regimes without a centralized government.

"No other country but the United States of America has the capacity to put the world back on the tracks," Biden said. "And unfortunately, this administration is part of the reason why the world was off the tracks."

He noted that several of his rivals have said in debates that they would be interested in Biden as a member of their Cabinets, a backhanded compliment he called "kind of cute."

"Let me ask you a rhetorical question," he said to the audience. "Are you ready to have a president next time out who's not capable of being secretary of state?"