Unions are welcome at the White House

Washington: President Barack Obama welcomed trade union leaders into the White House on Friday as he reversed restrictions on organised labour set up by the Bush administration.

Promising to "level the playing field" for workers, he offered the most pro-union sentiments heard from a US president for many years. "I do not view the labour movement as part of the problem. To me, it's part of the solution," said Obama, who was accused of being a socialist by the Republican Right during the election campaign.

He was speaking at the launch of a task force for middle class and working families that will be led by Joseph Biden, the US vice-president. Biden said: "For too many years we have had a White House that has failed to put the middle class front and centre of economic policy." Obama praised American workers as "the most productive in the world" but said working families were being hit hardest by a crisis not of their making. Tens of thousands have been laid off this week as the economy has gone from bad to worse.

There was more bad news on Friday when it was announced that the US economy shrank by 3.8 per cent in the last quarter of 2008, the steepest decline in a generation.

"It's like the American dream in reverse," said Obama, adding that he disagreed sharply with the "policies towards organised labour that we have seen these last eight years" of the Bush administration. The president signed a number of executive orders related to employment by the federal government.