President Barack Obama met with a dozen top labor leaders this afternoon for 45 minutes, winning the support of organized labor for his drive to reform health care by year's end.

The closed-door meeting at the White House included U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and John Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO, and Andrew L. Stern, president of the giant Service Employees International Union. Union leaders also discussed a bill to make it easier to organize new members, as well as the domestic auto industry.

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, and James P. Hoffa, Teamsters president, also attended.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger did not attend. UAW Secretary-Treasury Elizabeth Bunn attended the meeting instead. She said it was a "great" meeting but declined to elaborate as she exited the White House.

Sweeney said Bunn "thanked (Obama) for his assistance on the auto industry problems."

Labor leaders pledged to help Obama pass major health care reform by year's end.

"We are mobilizing at the grass-roots level and reminding our rank and file members that they are constituents of members of Congress, and they should express themselves," Sweeney said in an interview.

Hoffa, president of the 1.4 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said the union is committed to help Obama win congressional approval on health care reform.

"Don't forget that we've lost 3.4 million jobs in the last six months. When a person loses their job, they lose their health care," Hoffa said. "It's pretty elementary that this is spiraling out of control, and we talk about 50 million (without health care). I guarantee that's an old number." Hoffa said, "Health care is the No. 1 with (the president), and we're all going to support him."

Sweeney said health-care is the AFL-CIO's No. 1 priority, and the Employee Free Choice Act is the No. 2 priority. He also raised concerns about the fate of pensions. Organized labor has pushed for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act -- a bill that would make it much easier to unionize and would grant recognition to unions that receive a majority of signed cards, dubbed card check. It would also make it easier for unions to negotiate an initial contract after organizing a new bargaining unit.

Business groups contend the bill would unfairly tip the scales in favor of unions and have aggressively fought the measure, which has passed the U.S. House but is stymied in the U.S. Senate. Under current federal labor law, workers are entitled to vote whether to unionize by secret ballot -- after a union has collected enough signed cards from workers expressing an interest in joining a bargaining unit. Under some circumstances, some unions have secured collective bargaining rights with the simple car check.

Obama also wants the support of labor unions in the administration's push to reform the nation's health care system.

Also attending were Gerald McEntee, international president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the SEIU and chairwoman of the Change to Win labor coalition.

Other union officials attending included: Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America; Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers; Joe Hansen, president of United Food and Commercial Workers; Terence O'Sullivan, president of the Laborers' International Union of North America; Randi Weingarten, of the American Federation of Teachers; and Ed Hill, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The meeting was organized in part through former Michigan U.S. Rep. David Bonior, who heads the National Labor Coordinating Committee to work to prevent infighting among unions. "The American labor movement must unify to restore the American dream for working families," Bonior said in April, who is chair of the effort.

Bonior, who also attended the meeting, said the union leaders were holding a separate meeting at the NEA headquarters after the White House session.

Michigan had 771,000 workers in a union in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- though the percentage of unionized workers declined in the state last year.

Union members accounted for 18.8 percent of wage and salaried workers in Michigan in 2008, compared with 19.5 percent in 2007. At its peak in 1989, the first year for which comparable data is available, the state's union membership rate stood at 26 percent.

Nationally, the number of workers belonging to a union rose by 428,000 to 16.09 million in 2008 -- and union members accounted for 12.4 percent of workers, up from 12.1 percent a year earlier.

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David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau dshepardson@detnews.com (202) 662-8735