A Generation of Stagnant Wages, Collapsing Benefits
Working people want an American economy that works for them—that creates good jobs, where wealth is fairly shared, and where the economic life of our nation is about solving problems like the threat of climate change rather than creating problems like the foreclosure crisis.
We know that growing inequality undermines our ability to grow as a nation – by squandering the talents and the contributions of our people and consigning entire communities to stagnation and failure.
If we are going to make our vision real, we must challenge our political leaders, and we must also challenge ourselves and our movement.
Workers formed the labor movement as an expression of our lives— a chain of responsibility and solidarity, making millions of people here in America and around the world into agents of social change – able to accomplish much more together than as isolated individuals. That movement gives voice to the hopes, values and interests of working people every day. But despite our best efforts, we have endured a generation of stagnant wages and collapsing benefits—a generation where the labor movement has been much more about defense than about offense, where our horizons are shrinking rather than growing.
But the future of the labor movement depends on moving forward—on innovating and changing the way we work, on being open to all working people and giving voice to all workers, even when our laws and employers seek to divide us from each other. And that is something we are working on every day.
The AFL-CIO is building new ways for working people to organize themselves, and new models for collective bargaining. We have created Working America, a 3 million member community-based union growing in working class neighborhoods—that is one of the signal accomplishments of my predecessor John Sweeney, who I’m so happy is here today.
Giving Voice to All Workers
We are very proud of our alliance with the workers’ center movement that links the unions of the AFL-CIO with hundreds of grassroots organizations. We are also working with community allies to strengthen the voice and bargaining power of low-wage workers in Los Angeles’ car washes – some of the worst-paid and worst-treated workers in this country.
Next week, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker will lead the labor movement’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina – continuing the great work she has done over so many years on behalf of the most vulnerable in our society.
Not far from Greensboro, we have been working with unemployed African American day laborers and their workers’ center, desperately trying to keep alive the dream launched in those sit-ins.
Staving Off Unemployment, Homelessness
In San Diego last week, I visited a pre-apprenticeship program formed by the local labor movement to create career paths for at-risk youth. In Los Angeles, I saw a remarkable community-based labor-management training program created by the Electrical Workers that is focused on green jobs. These programs demonstrate the tremendous benefits that are possible when labor and business come together to solve problems jointly.
I met people who had been homeless who were about to become journeymen electricians. A young man named Nakayah said to me, "The union gave me a chance to go from no life to the hope for a middle-class life. It didn’t just teach me to get a job, it taught me how to be a man."
As I talked to hotel workers—members of Unite Here, many of them immigrants—on strike to keep hotel jobs from falling back into poverty and to union members with PhD’s fighting to prevent California’s budget catastrophe from cratering not only their jobs but the education of their state’s children, I thought of my father on strike in the coal fields when I was a boy.
And I was reminded of this basic truth: A job is a good job because workers fight to make it one—it doesn’t matter if the job is in a coal mine or a classroom or a car wash. And that is why unions are needed today, more than ever.
(See Profile of Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President.)
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