Thank you, Ken [Howard], for that generous introduction. And thank you for inviting me. I'm glad to be here with all of you, for your first convention as SAG-AFTRA.
And let me start by recognizing the strategic insight and activism of your leadership -- Ken Howard and Amy Aquino.
Brothers and sisters, we’re stronger together – it’s as simple as that. And one of the major goals across our labor movement is strengthening the power of unions. I have no doubt that the merger of SAG and AFTRA has built a stronger union. It is a victory for your combined membership -- and the early results are exciting.
One example of your growing strength is the new contract for dancers organizing in the music video industry – it’s new, it’s creative, and it’s about time! And there are more examples -- your work at American Public Media, and the depth of your penetration in the world of audio books.
Don't get me wrong, the job of strengthening our unions and America's working families still has a long way to go before we can take a deep breath and step back.
Our goal is, and must always be, to make sure our members, and all people who work hard, even if they don't get the big break, can still live, work, and retire with a good life -- a middle class life -- with dignity.
Let me make one more observation about the broad media industries where your members find employment. Over the past decade and more, the cost of doing business has been increasingly shifted onto performers. I'll give you one example. Today, it’s hard to be an audio performer, without a high-end home studio.
Listen, I understand that changing technology has created new openings, and made it possible for your members to outfit a quality home recording studio, with first-rate sound and editing equipment.
And I know that a home studio can give a performer flexibility -- but our challenge is to make sure that workers who create value, don't also pay the entire cost of producing that value, without reaping additional benefits.
You see, sisters and brothers, your members create tremendous value. I'm talking about the stars – yes -- and everyone else who makes it possible for the stars to shine. We couldn't have the names on the marquee without the artists, the background actors, all the people who absolutely love this business, and whose labor makes possible the joy and wonder I feel, and that all the rest of us in the viewing or listening public feel, when we're transported to another place, or another time, by the magic of the work you do.
A few weeks ago, at the AFL-CIO national convention here in Los Angeles, it seemed like everyone I talked to told me of meeting your members while they were hard at work at their day jobs, as wait staff at restaurants, and at retail shops, including one of your members who works occasionally at a cigar shop downtown. Sisters and brothers, I was proud to learn, the guy from the cigar shop had the opportunity to come to the convention for my keynote speech.
That means a lot to me, you see, and not because I like a bigger audience. The truth is, I spend a lot of time talking about bringing people together so we can build strength for all working people, and I mean it. I absolutely do.
We are all connected. And we’re stronger when we stand together.
Together, we can lead better lives. All of us. We can be a better country, with better jobs and middle class living standards. That's what we want. That's who we are. We want to live with dignity, have our voice respected, and provide well for our families, our children.
We all have dreams, of course we do. Maybe none have dreams bigger than the dreams of your members.
But at the end of the day, your members are like everyone else who works for a living. They’re workers. Hard workers, activists, questioners, and no matter what happens, each member, every single one, deserves to be fairly rewarded for the work he or she does.
And that's what a union does. That's why we strengthen our foundations, and prepare for negotiations. That's why we struggle for our rights on the job, and that includes fighting against right-to-work-for-less, in every state where it encourages workers to freeload off the hard work and organization of others.
We'll take on that right-wing assault, so we can improve work for all workers, because we know that unless we make real everyone's rights, none of our rights will be secure.
I'm going to say that one more time. A union stands for all. That's what makes us strong.
And, as a movement, we will not allow the right-wing to pass more laws, to let freeloaders weaken the ability of all workers to bargain for safety on the job, for health care, and retirement, and fair pay. If they try, we'll fight to defend our rights, and it will only make us stronger!
At the AFL-CIO Convention, we talked a lot about building community, about strengthening the labor movement at the local level, and reaching out beyond our own members in our communities. Nothing is more important to our ability to win good contracts, to gain genuine American living standards, to engage in electoral politics when it matters, and to build real strength in our unions and our communities. They’re all tied together, and they all come back to one idea – We’re stronger together.
My friends, by the time we wrapped up the AFL-CIO convention, we had agreed on a full agenda of change for our movement. And we focused on three broad areas. The first is growth, innovation, and political action. The second is building shared prosperity in the global economy. And the last is all about building community partnerships and grassroots power.
We discussed major plans to translate that agenda into action, and so today we’re looking at how that action will play out. As a movement, we endorsed a whole bunch of resolutions, but that was just the start of the work. And I need your help. I'm asking for your commitment.
You see, Brothers and sisters, I’m not satisfied with having a lot of nice phrases on fancy paper. I want to use the power we have, and the power we’ll build, to improve the lives of working people. I'm dead serious about that.
To tell you the truth, one of our greatest hurdles between where the labor movement is today and where we need to be is isolation. It's not just us. Working people all over America are isolated from each other.
You see, the right-wing understands isolation and alienation – they’ve taken advantage of the divisions and insecurity of working people. They’ve learned to exploit just about every institution in America, to enrich themselves at the expense of the 99%.
Everything, from the speed and frequency of online stock trades, to gaming Federal Reserve monetary policy, to using tax loopholes, and, yes, bankruptcy laws, too often those institutions have been used for one purpose, to skim profits for a few at the expense of the many.
And that’s why it’s not a surprise – but it should make all of us angry -- that the American working class is no longer our middle class.
Sisters and brothers, this is our shared experience in America today. It's not just your members. It's all of us. Everyone who works for a living, works harde, and creates more value, over longer hours, and yet we earn less. Think back over the past 15 years—think of all the work you did, all your co-workers did, all your friends and neighbors and family did. All of the wage increases over the last 15 years, not some, not most, not the majority, but all, all of those increases went to the top 10%.
I want you to remember this statistic, because it’s the source of so much pain, and because it’s something we’re going to change. All of the wage increases over the last 15 years went to the top 10%. Incomes of the rest of us—90% of America—went down. And those whose incomes went up the most, were those who were at the top already—the richest 1%.
Since 2009, the pay of America’s corporate CEO’s has gone up 40%. Imagine for a second how strong our families, our communities, and our economy would be if the incomes of ordinary people had increased at that rate. Think about it. Forty percent.
But it didn't. We do the work. But our pay is down.
The 1% bent the rules, corrupted our democracy, and took all the money. It's wrong. It’s un-American. It's completely backwards, and it’s upside down.
Brothers and sisters, we are going to turn America right-side up, with a real working class movement!
Everything we do, everything, should be part of our over-arching strategy for winning shared prosperity. I'm talking about everything we do, from the local to the national level of the labor movement. What you do. What I do. Every day. If we're not moving the dial, we'd better stop and think about it. And then do something different.
I’m not talking about a silver bullet, or a magic bean. I'm talking about old-fashioned unionism. About talking to each other, supporting each other, talking within our movement, and with friends and allies outside the walls of our union halls, to find out what we need from each other, to find out what will make us all grow stronger!
And then, we’ll take action, and move forward together!
You know, it doesn’t take but once or twice, standing together, before the strings of our common experience strengthen into the tight bonds of real solidarity. That’s how we’ll build community. That’s how we’ll rebuild an America where you don’t surrender your humanity, your dignity, your rights, when you go to work.
Sisters and brothers, we’re going to tear down the barriers, remove the boundaries between us all. Union, non-union, never-heard-of-unions. We're going to reach out to everybody who works for a living, and we’re going to build a new working class movement.
We won’t let employers or politicians tell us who’s in our movement and who isn’t. Working people alone will decide who’s in our labor movement. We will! That’s our job, our responsibility. And we’ll stand and fight, and march, and struggle with every single worker who needs us, because we’re the American labor movement. We know solidarity, and we will not be denied!
What we need is the willingness to use our solidarity, to stand together, and to let every worker know that whoever stands with us, will have a friend for life, a powerful friend, thousands of friends, millions of friends, who will rise together and march together -- not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. And the harder is it is, the longer we’ll stand.
More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke to the 4th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention. He said:
“Powerful forces tell us to rely on the good will, and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us. They deplore our discontent, they resent our will to organize.”
Dr. King knew all about discontent. He knew all about the will to organize. He was not a union member, but he was a courageous leader who knew how to break the silence, how to stand together, and how to win together. And, brothers and sisters, he was as good a friend as any worker could have. He walked down a line of National Guard bayonets with us. And he gave his life in Memphis, even though he knew his life had been threatened, he died with our union brothers and sisters, those strong sanitation workers in the city of Memphis who suffered discontent, and who stood up with the will to organize.
And I ask you now, who will we stand with? Who shares our discontent? Who needs our will to organize?
We will stand with anyone who needs us. Dr. King said it then. America needs it now! We need it now!
Everything we’re doing, everything from our growing political independence, to our defense of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps, to our campaign for comprehensive immigration reform, with a workable and realistic path to citizenship. All of it has one purpose, one purpose, to build power for working people, for you, and for me, and the rest of the 99%.
We’re doing this, because, as my friend Sen. Elizabeth Warren so eloquently put it, the pundits, and the big corporate lobbyists in Washington might be against us, but the American people are on our side.
On every issue we care about, our values are America’s values, and our agenda is America’s agenda.
We’re working for Wall Street reform. The far right-wing Republicans are fighting it, and our politician friends may be nowhere to be found, but the American people are on our side. More than 80% of the American people are on our side!
We’re working to raise the minimum wage. Big business is fighting us, but the American people are with us, more than 75% of the American public are on our side!
We’re working for investments in America’s infrastructure, not millions, not billions, but trillions. The right-wing politicians in Washington are fighting us, but more than 70% of the American people are on our side!
We’re working for education, health care, safe jobs, and an economy that works for the people who work. Washington says it can’t be done, but the American people are on our side!
My friends, we are going to get it done. We’ll start at the local level, and we’ll build to the national level. And we’ll keep building, for global prosperity, for fair trade, for good jobs, justice, and a sustainable economy here and abroad.
We’re going to turn America right-side up, you heard me say it. We are going to get it done!
Always, always, keep reaching. Keep fighting.
That’s the key. That’s what we need to bring out the best in our country, and in ourselves, to build the future we know we can have, we must have, for each of us, for our children and grandchildren.
And we will never, never give up.
We will always, always go forward.
And together we will win, for our families, for each other, for our future, for our country. Standing together. Working together. Organizing together. Voting together. Today. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year. It’s our legacy. Yours and mine, sisters and brothers. Let’s do it!
Thank you, and God bless you! And God bless the work you do!
