84 Percent of Union Members Say Economy Tops Their Concerns

When Rachelle Pablo, a member of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA), was laid off from her job in Albuquerque because a tanking economy had dried up construction work, she says she was “scared the economy would keep getting worse for my family and me.”

But, as Pablo told reporters this afternoon at a post-election press conference at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., she went to work to fix the economy by joining the Labor 2008 political-mobilization campaign to get out the vote among union members for Barack Obama, Senate candidate Tom Udall and other working family candidates.

She says the new administration will change the nation’s direction for working families, adding: