Biden bids for union backing

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday made his pitch to the Culinary union, emphasizing his pro-labor credentials and pledging to stand up for workers if elected.

"I have the best labor record of anybody running from either party," the Delaware senator told a group of union members at their headquarters in downtown Las Vegas. "I also come from the biggest corporate state in America, and I say the same thing to the corporate people."

Biden said organized labor has come under attack in recent years.

"There's two wars going on that this administration is waging," he said. "One war they're waging is an unnecessary war in Iraq. The other one is they're waging a war on labor's house. There's a full-blown war. These guys are for real. They've been lined up 10 deep since this president took office to change the fundamental equation."

President Bush and his allies have assaulted organized labor on three fronts, Biden said. They've attacked consumer rights, the "ability to sue corporations when they cheat us," under the mantle of tort reform; appointed justices to the Supreme Court who will "interpret the laws against the interests of working people"; and stocked the National Labor Relations Board with appointees who have implemented anti-union regulations, he said.

But Biden said unions could end up re-energized if American workers wake up to the situation they are in. "White-collar workers are figuring out that the corporations they thought were so good to them ain't so good to them. They figured out they're sending their jobs overseas," he said.

Answering questions from the audience, Biden said executive pay is out of control and should be determined by shareholders. "It has no relation to profit, no relation to progress, no relation to anything resembling just compensation," he said.

Biden said it wasn't only working people who were outraged by CEO salaries. "College white boys don't like that either, who have their shares of stock," he told the ethnically diverse crowd. "We have to have a little bit of a coalition here. Believe it or not, it's not just employees, it is stockholders who don't like this either."

Another problem in corporate America, he said, is the recent trend of private equity firms buying companies and "cannibalizing" them for quick, short-term profit. He said the tax code should be restructured to discourage such actions.

On Social Security, Biden said he favors raising the salary ceiling for payroll taxes to $120,000, which he said would keep the program solvent through the year 2076. He also called for universal health care.

Aside from attending the 100 Black Men conference in Las Vegas on Friday afternoon at Paris Las Vegas, Biden was not scheduled to make any other campaign stops in Nevada.

The 60,000-member union has drawn nearly all the top Democratic candidates to town to rally support for its stalled contract negotiations with MGM Mirage and Harrah's.

Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards also have come to Las Vegas in recent weeks to woo the politically powerful union, which is expected to play a significant role in the early presidential nominating caucuses scheduled for January 19. The union says it will endorse a candidate in December.

Audience member Juana Gonzalez, a 58-year-old dry cleaning worker, said she was impressed with Biden, whom she hadn't known much about. "He's very interesting," she said.

All the candidates who have spoken to the union have said all the right things, she said. "I hope they do whatever they say. They always promise a lot."

Gonzalez said her preferred candidate is Clinton.

"Hillary is very strong, after everything that has happened to her," she said. "I'd go for her if I had a choice because they all promise basically the same things."