Obama Approval Among Union Members Falls to 52%

The latest Gallup poll taken just before the Labor Day weekend reveals that President Barack Obama’s job approval rating among union members has fallen from 69 percent to 52 percent.

The president’s job approval is now at the narrowest spread to the 46 percent job approval rating by non-union Americans since taking office in 2009.

Unions were reported to have determined the outcome of the 2008 presidential election by raising over $400 million of the $745 million Senator Barack Obama used to overwhelm Sen. John McCain’s $368 million in in fund-raising. Unions that year also donated $68 million to Democrats of the $75 million they raised for other candidates.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka also took credit for Obama’s 2012 reelection, because “without the huge push” by the nation’s organized labor unions Mr. Obama never would have “won Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada — and their combined 34 electoral votes.”

But despite unions delivering on their commitment to elect President Obama, earlier this year Trumka blamed union membership hitting a 100-year low. Trumka complained that 70 percent of the jobs created under Obama’s Administration had been low-wage “poverty-level jobs.” Trumka quoted the most recent BLS report to point out that a century low of 6.6 percent of private-sector workers are now unionized.

As reported by the ECRI, “The sustained decline in the official jobless rate–now approaching the Fed’s estimate of ‘full employment’–is a misleading indicator of labor market slack.” ECRI analysis reveals that the jobs recovery since the Great Recession has been spearheaded by cheap labor. For those with less than a high school diploma, employment-to-population-ratios have regained almost two-thirds of their recessionary losses. But only a third for those with high school or college degrees has been recovered.

Gallup states that Obama’s approval rating peaked at 69 percent during the first “honeymoon phase” of his presidency and has steadily trended down ever since. During two terms, Obama’s approval among union members has averaged 63 percent. Currently, “Obama’s approval rating is the identical 52% among union members who work for the government and union members who work for private-sector employers.”

The gap between union workers and nongovernment union workers has typically shown little to no difference in their approval ratings for Obama.

The gap between approval ratings among union members and nonmembers has risen from 7 percent during the “honeymoon” to 13 percent on Election Day 2012. But the approval gap has steadily narrowed to the current 6 percent low.

Gallup suggests that one key reason union members’ approval may be lower is due to the -resident’s pursuit of free trade agreements with Asian nations: “Labor unions typically oppose free trade agreements because of concerns that cheaper imports could result in job losses for American workers.”

Having gone all-in for Obama, union members seem to be having massive buyers’ remorse.