Teamsters to endorse Obama

WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama is slated to pick up the endorsement of the powerful Teamsters, the second major union endorsement for the Democratic front-runner in a week, union officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Obama will meet with Teamster President James P. Hoffa in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday. The endorsement is expected to come soon thereafter, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the planned formal announcement.

The Teamsters represent 1.4 million members.

Union support will be key in the Democratic primaries in the next few weeks, particularly in Ohio on March 4 and Pennsylvania on April 22. Ohio and Pennsylvania have some of the nation’s largest number of union workers, with more than 15 percent of the workforce unionized in Pennsylvania and just over 14 percent in Ohio.

The endorsement from the Teamsters is Obama’s third from organized labor in a week. The 1.9-million member Service Employees International Union endorsed the Illinois senator last Friday, and the smaller United Food and Commercial Workers endorsed him last Thursday.

Rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton by far has a larger number of unions in her corner with 12 endorsements from unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO — the nation’s largest labor federation — and the United Farm Workers from the rival Change To Win labor federation.

But Obama also has two AFL-CIO unions in his corner in the Transport Workers Union and the National Weather Service Employees Organization. And with a Teamsters endorsement, he will have four Change To Win unions in his corner: the Teamsters, SEIU, the United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE, who gave the Illinois senator his first national endorsement from a union.