Tim highlighted Obama's response to striking union workers in Chicago earlier, but I wanted to re-emphasize why a president (or in this case, an incoming president-elect) supporting striking workers is such a big deal. It's not just that it hasn't happened in a long time, it's that in 1981, when Ronald Reagan entered the labor dispute between the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization and the FAA, he crushed not only the union, but the bargaining abilities of unions all over the country. Basically, Reagan told the striking air traffic controllers that they were in violation of the law and they would be terminated if they did not come back to work. Striking workers were prevented from being rehired until 1993, when Bill Clinton ended the ban on hiring employees who had joined the strike in 1981.
Obama hasn't done anything nearly as significant here, and the FAA is a federal agency, so Reagan was able to intervene in a more direct way than he would have with a private company. But it's worth remembering how much the president has the power to affect the relationship between management and labor nationwide.
--A. Serwer
