“It is time,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said to the more than 1,600 delegates from 57 unions and allies from community partners, progressive groups and global unions, for a “new and stronger movement” for working people. In his keynote address this morning to the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention, Trumka said:

What we have done yesterday cannot limit what we do tomorrow. Now is not the time to settle for small steps. If we are going to move forward, we have to challenge ourselves….This is America. It is time we value work—not wealth, not greed—work and the people who do the work.

The convention’s debates, resolutions, action sessions and other actions are all aimed at one goal, he said.

Everything we do this week will be part of a strategy for winning broadly shared prosperity.

Pointing out that for decades, “the working class was the middle class,” Trumka said that growing economic inequality means that’s no longer true.

Here’s the truth we live everyday: We work harder, we work longer hours. We create more—more goods, more services, more of everything—and yet most of us earn less. Less than we did five years ago. Less than we earned 15 years ago. Barely more than we earned 35 years ago.

For the past 15 years, the vast majority of wage increases went to the top 10%, while income for the rest of us went down, and the top 1% did the best, Trumka said. Since 2009, pay for corporate CEOs has soared by 40%.

This is upside down….Imagine for a second what kind of country we would live in if ordinary people’s income had increased like CEOs’. Almost no one would live in poverty. It is time to turn America right side up; and to turn America right side up, we need a real working-class movement.

He acknowledged that working families face powerful enemies such as the Koch brothers, the American Legislative Exchange Council, Wall Street and
the wealthy, “forces who want our country to be run by and for the rich, forces that have systematically stripped workers of power and pushed wages and benefits down:

But greed and privilege and hate have always been with us. The question is what are we going to do about it?

With 13 million members, the AFL-CIO is the “biggest, strongest and best organized force for economic justice in America,” Trumka said.

But we are a small part of the 150 million Americans who work for a living. We cannot win economic justice for ourselves, for union members alone. It would not be right and it is not possible. All working people will rise together or we keep falling together….The success of our movement is not measured in the members we organize or the politicians we elect. It is measured in the progress of working people—all working people.

He said that prior to the convention, there were hundreds of conversations and listening sessions held at every level of the union movement and with allies, academics and friends to set the strategy and direction of the labor movement. The overriding message was that the union movement needs to be wider, deeper, more inclusive and active in organizing workers, not in words, but in deeds. Speaking of the input from the pre-convention sessions, Trumka said:

Another said, ‘We need a union culture shift that will turn the labor movement back into a movement that fights for the interest of all working people.’ We heard that all over America, workers are organizing in all kinds of ways and they call their unity by all kinds of names—workers’ unions, associations, centers, networks….We need to organize ourselves in ways that fit with the jobs people do now and how the economy works now.

He said, “We must make our movement and our leadership as diverse as the workforce we speak for.” That includes tapping into “the energy and hope” of young workers and moving forward immigrants and the children of immigrants.

Sisters and brothers, it is time to tear down the barriers, remove the boundaries between workers. It is time to stop letting employers and politicians tell us who is a worker and who isn’t, who is in our movement and who isn’t. Working people alone should decide who is in the labor movement.

That movement, he said, will mobilize its members and power to win shared prosperity that includes:

• Building “an economy from the middle out”;
• Health care and retirement security for all;
• Investment in a 21st century infrastructure, educational systems and a manufacturing base; 
• Paid sick days for all;
• The rich, the powerful and the privileged paying their fair share in taxes; and
• No more tax deals for companies that ship jobs overseas....

However, Trumka emphasized:

Shared prosperity is nothing but a dream until we have democracy—the right to organize and bargain collectively with employers, the right to vote and have that vote count. The right to govern together with our fellow citizens and be free of the power of concentrated wealth.

Shared prosperity doesn’t stop at our borders, he said.

Shared prosperity means a global economy built on rising pay for all who labor, and an end to trade deals that treat corporations better than people. 

“Look around you,” Trumka told the convention audience:

This hall is filled with working-class heroes; and all across the country, all across our world, people with a will to organize are ready to join with us, and together we will turn America right side up.

Then he began to call to the convention stage a parade of workers representing the broad and diverse cross section of the American workers’ movement, from New York City taxi drivers, Walmart workers, union veterans, steelworkers, electricians, teachers, EMTs, Working America members, young workers, day laborers and more.

Our challenge, our responsibility—yours and mine—is to join together, with millions more like us, to build real power….Our job is to create a working-class movement strong enough to lift up all workers in this country. The way we honor these American heroes, sisters and brothers, is not with talk, but with action. With innovation. Are you ready to get started?

The thunderous applause and cheers gave the answer.