UAW President Bob King Uses Occupy Rhetoric in Lansing Speech

At the gathering of the institutional left tribes in Lansing, Michigan this morning, United Auto Workers president Bob King thanked the usual left players, including Planned Parenthood and the environmentalist movement, in a speech that also utilized the rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

At one point in his speech, King had the crowd chant with him, “I am broke, I am hungry, I can’t pay the rent. I am part of the 99%.” As President of the UAW, Mr. King is said to earn about $176,00 per year, according to this long list of UAW executives who earn well above $100,000 annually. 

King also brags about Pres. Obama’s nine point margin of victory in the 2012 election. UAW Pres. King fails, however, to mention that the Proposal 2 that would have put collective-bargaining into the Michigan Constitution – a ballot initiative that King and the UAW backed –  failed by a 14 point margin in the same election.

Here is part of Mr. King’s speech, in which he specifically thanks Planned Parenthood for calling their members what King called “the faith community,” the “civil rights community,”  and “our friends in the environmental movement.” King said he is, “so proud of the coming together” of what he calls a “broad progressive coalition.”