Thank you, Harry [Lombardo]. I want to congratulate you on winning the presidency of this powerful union. A union with a proud past and – I can feel it in this room today -- an equally promising future. I congratulate you on your focus on the future, and thank you all for inviting me to be here. It's good to be with you all.
Harry and I have known each other for years. We’re both part of a fighting Pennsylvania labor movement where we’ve all learned from each other -- and hashed things out when we had to. That’s how we’ve grown stronger together. And that’s how we’ve supported each other. Because quite frankly, if we hadn’t talked through our troubles and triumphs, we wouldn’t have known what we could offer each other.
I’ll ask you to think about that, and remember that, and do the same. Learn from each other, talk to each other, because building community starts at home, within the House of Labor and even within our own unions, our own locals, and definitely within our state and local labor movements.
Two weeks ago at the AFL-CIO Convention just down the road in Los Angeles, 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 fight for 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.
And, 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.
It’s time to break the isolation. That's how solidarity starts. The corporate right-wing knows how to pressure us, how to pit us against each other, plant seeds of insecurity. We can't react to that pressure by turning against each other, or by closing ourselves off to the outside world.
You see, corporate CEOs and Wall Street right-wingers understand isolation and alienation – they’ve taken advantage of our divisions and our insecurity. They’ve learned to exploit just about every institution in America to enrich themselves at the expense of the 99 percent. 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 makes me angry -- when people say, “The American working class is no longer middle class.” The American working class is no longer middle class.
That, brothers and sisters, is our shared experience in America today. Everyone who works for a living works harder, and creates more value, over longer hours, and yet most of us earn less. Think back over the last 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 that 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, a movement that's building right here with the letters T… W… U!
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!
My friends, you know my position on your legislative priorities. I stand with you 100%. You don’t need me to run through it. But I want you to know, that I know and value, the work you and your members do.
You make America move. You make the work of millions of workers possible, as you take people to their jobs in New York City, and San Francisco, and Miami, and so many other cities.
You move people and vital goods over our railways and through the air, all over America.
Whatever your job, your work makes a difference, because it takes all of us together to make this whole thing go, and together we will make sure America once again values work – your work and all work, and rewards hard work with fair pay.
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 the work has only just begun. And I need your help. I'm asking for your commitment.
You see, brothers and sisters, I’m not satisfied with having a few 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.
Everything we do, everything should be part of this 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.
And that’s why I’m asking for your help. I’m asking you to take what you accomplish at your convention, and truly take it to heart. And then go home dissatisfied, and hungry for action.
Why “dissatisfied”?
Our unions have proud histories, my friends. But we can't be satisfied with a legacy. Our labor movement too often has been defined by our past achievements. That's not good enough.
As a movement – all of us – we can’t be satisfied until we make real change, on the ground, back home in our local communities.
I’m asking you to build with me a new legacy, a new heritage to pass on to our children. Help me build on our legacy, instead of being limited by it, to rely on our founding strength and solidarity and values—and use them to build a new working class movement in our time, and for our time -- a movement of, by and for working people.
What we need is the willingness to use our solidarity, to stand together, and to let every worker know that whoever marches 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 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.
Because, brothers and sisters, we do the work of America -- we drive the trains and clean the homes, we write the software and teach the children. We put the scrubbers on the power plants and the planes in the sky. We keep the lights on and the water flowing, and, hell, we even deal the cards at the table.
Our movement is as old as our nation, and as new as the immigrant hotel worker, the apprentice, the new teacher walking through that classroom door for her very first day.
Whose job is it to build our movement? It's our job. It's on us to build a movement for the 99%. Not the 11% we are right now. The 99%.
More than fifty 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 then he died 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 acted out 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 and food stamps, to our campaign for comprehensive immigration reform with a workable and realistic path to citizenship, all of it has one overarching purpose, to build power for working people, for you and for me and the rest of the 99 percent.
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 just about 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 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 people are on our side!
We’re working for investments in America’s infrastructure, not millions, not billions, but trillions. The Republican majority in Washington is 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. Stronger locals. Globally united!
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. Fighting 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!
