“Something is changing in America,” AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told delegates to the Washington State Labor Council’s (WSLC's) convention.

Evidence of this change, Holt Baker pointed out, is the public’s growing demand that politicians focus on good jobs and end bad trade deals and the mounting awareness of the undue influence right-wing CEOs and front groups have on the political and legislative process.

The pieces are coming together and the picture is getting clear. We will change America. But we won’t do it alone. As mighty as our labor movement is—and here in Washington you are a powerful force—we cannot do it alone.

In her keynote speech this morning to the more than 500 union members gathered in Wenatchee, she spoke of the need to build coalitions with friends and allies in our communities who “share our passion and our vision.”

We are all working people, and we are united by our vision of the American Dream. To build a coalition that can withstand the upcoming flood of secret corporate dollars and to hold our leaders accountable during the legislative season, we certainly must reach far beyond the walls of our union halls. That’s how we’ll win the future we want and need.

Holt Baker said working families have two jobs this November, “to defeat the right-wing politicians who want to end collective bargaining rights, keep outsourcing every good job in America and who want to ‘divide and conquer’ working people.”

And second, we need to continue to change the conversations in America so that every single elected leader understands that the greatest threat to America isn’t public debt but economic inequality, that it’s political poison to hurt working families and it’s wrong to support free trade that punishes working people.

Pointing to Washington’s race for governor, she said that former Rep. Jay Inslee (D) “stands up for public sector workers and manufacturing. He supports the building trades and postal employees and he believes in collective bargaining, and, let me tell you, Inslee’s door is always open to working families.”

Holt Baker said Republican candidate Rob McKenna is hiding his real political philosophy under the cloak of a moderate. “We’ve seen candidates like him before, conservative candidates who appeal to moderates.”

Maybe you remember George W. Bush, who capitalized on the term “compassionate conservative.” You know, and I know, that there was nothing compassionate about driving our nation into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a crisis that threw millions out of work and millions more into foreclosure. Rob McKenna offers the same solutions as former President Bush, and those solutions are the problem.

She also told delegates of the importance an “independent labor movement,” such as Workers' Voice, has “to put our resources into our own PACs and programs instead of any political party.”    

Only with an independent labor movement can we campaign day-in and day-out for working people. It will work. We know that working people everywhere are hungry for a national action plan to build prosperity and for the right to be able to bargain collectively for a better life.

Read more coverage at The Stand.