Good afternoon and Happy Earth Week. Thank you, Brother Cecil (Roberts).
Ernie, I want you to know how much I appreciate working together through the Labor Energy Partnership.
Secretary (Jennifer) Granholm, on behalf of the 12.5 million working people in the 56 unions of the AFL-CIO, thank you for being here.
And to you both, I want to say how much it helps working families when the Secretary of Energy is pro-worker.
Look, we’re facing the threat of climate change.
The challenge of keeping and creating good union-jobs.
The urgent need to secure workers rights and dignity.
Rights and dignity. For every worker. All colors, creeds, faiths, genders, orientations, abilities and experiences.
That’s the full scope of diversity that makes us America.
Because, as we address the climate crisis, we will confront deep-rooted inequity.
Systems built on stolen land and labor. Structures from the Jim Crow South. 40 years of trickle down economics, neglected infrastructure, and offshoring.
The inequality of income, opportunity and power that have left communities all across the U.S. behind.
But with President Biden, I’m confident those days are over. Because that’s what he promised. I’ve known him for 40 years. He’s a man of his word.
His climate goals are ambitious. But this is America. We do big things.
And the best...and we would argue the only...path forward runs through the labor movement.
That’s why the president’s executive order on climate calls for “well-paying union jobs.”
Secretary Granholm, we appreciate your leadership. We hear you calling for millions of good-paying union jobs to build the equitable, clean energy future we need and deserve.
We appreciate that you want to invest in us.
I happen to be a third generation Pennsylvania coal miner. Those jobs built this country.
And my union, the United Mine Workers of America, made coal mining a middle-class job. They didn’t start out that way.
Across our economy, industry by industry, that’s how unions built the American Dream.
And as we transition to clean energy, we're not going to give up an inch or sacrifice a dollar for false promises of “retraining.”
We’re not going to walk away from places like Greene County, Pennsylvania.
We will fight climate change with everything we have. But we simply won’t allow this transition to be done on our backs.
Working families will tune you out if it’s going to cost us the ability to feed a family...or our toehold in the middle class.
We need job creation upfront, not “to be determined.”
There should be an investment and jobs plan in every community that lost or will lose coal jobs...every community where plants will no longer make transmissions...every community that suffers from environmental damage.
Each person and every place matters.We know the Biden administration gets it.
That’s the hope and promise of building back better.
For racial justice. Gender equity.
With labor unions.
If our rights, dignity and power are at the center of the clean energy transition...
We will create widespread opportunities, lift each other up—out of poverty, away from the margins, into a new era of possibilities.
The single greatest key is passing the PRO Act—which guarantees a free and fair path to a union.
See, coal companies didn’t gift us living wages and safety protections.
They nickeled and dimed us. Told us coal dust was good for our lungs.
My union won job safety and quality through collective bargaining, not corporate benevolence.
We had to fight for every right. Every protection. Every raise.
Workers paid in blood spilled by Coal and Iron police.
We can’t answer the climate crisis if we have to fight those battles again.
Let’s learn from the past.
Calling it a green or a clean job doesn’t make it a good job, doesn’t equal family-supporting wages, doesn’t mean retirement security.
Workers in renewable energy sectors need a free and fair path to organize, to make those jobs good jobs. NOW.
Equitable clean energy means universal labor rights and local opportunities.
For every person and every place in America.
That’s why this discussion today is so important. We’re grateful to have you, Secretary Granholm. Thank you.