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     Crowd Cheers as Presidential Candidate Sanders Drops in on Picket Line

   by Reuters

   Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders paid an impromptu
   visit to a Verizon workers' picket line in Brooklyn on Wednesday after
   being endorsed by New York City transit workers as he tried to wrest a
   bit of union support from rival Hillary Clinton.

   The Brooklyn-born Sanders addressed an enthusiastic crowd of striking
   workers from Verizon Communications Inc. as "brothers and sisters" and
   thanked them for their courage in standing up to what he characterized
   as corporate greed.

   It was a scene tailor-made for the U.S. senator from Vermont, who has
   focused on income inequality in his campaign for the Democratic
   presidential nomination. Sanders is trying to catch up with Clinton,
   the front-runner, in Tuesday's primary in New York, a state both
   candidates have called home.

   Workers cheered as Sanders criticized the mammoth communications
   company for wanting to take away health benefits, outsource jobs and
   avoid federal income taxes, calling it "just another major American
   corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans."

   "Today you are standing up not just for justice for Verizon workers,
   you're standing up for millions of Americans ... and you're telling
   corporate America that they cannot have it all," Sanders said.

   Nearly 40,000 Verizon employees walked off the job on Wednesday in one
   of the largest U.S. strikes in recent years after contract talks hit an
   impasse.

   While Sanders whipped up the crowd of hundreds in Brooklyn, Clinton's
   campaign issued a statement criticizing Verizon for wanting to
   outsource more jobs and urging the company to go back to the bargaining
   table.

   "To preserve and grow America's middle class, we need to protect good
   wages and benefits, including retirement security," Clinton said. "And
   we should be doing all we can to keep good-paying jobs with real job
   security in New York."

   Earlier, Clinton won the backing of a local unit, representing more
   than 27,000 area workers, of the International Brotherhood of
   Electrical Workers, one of the unions involved in the Verizon strike.

   Sanders has championed the rights of working-class Americans, including
   a proposed $15 federal minimum wage, in daily campaign speeches
   targeting corporate greed. Yet Clinton has racked up support from
   unions representing
   the majority of organized labor, a crucial base of support for the
   Democratic Party.

   They include influential unions such as the AFSCME, a public employees
   union with 1.6 million members, and the Service Employees International
   Union, or SEIU, which has about 2 million members in a variety of
   professions.

   In what was widely viewed as a win for Sanders, the AFL-CIO, the
   country's largest labor union federation, in February declined to
   endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/crowd-cheers-presidential-candidate-s
   anders-drops-picket-line/3284500.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/crowd-cheers-presidential-candidate-sanders-drops-picket-line/3284500.html