Thank you for having me. It’s wonderful to be here. And thank you, Brother Hasan [Solomon], for your truly generous words of introduction.
Sisters and brothers, I want to thank you for being a part of this conference. Your union is powerful. Your history is inspiring. Your future is yours for the making. As volunteers and activists, you are the roots from which the strength of our movement rises.
That’s an important truth for all of us to remember.
Sometimes we can feel isolated in the work we do. Maybe you serve on a young worker committee, or you are dedicated to women’s issues or LGBTQ equality, or maybe issues of justice have motivated you to become more involved. You’re not alone. You’re part of a movement, and your passion, your ideas, your convictions and your actions make us stronger.
You are the raw material of our shared power. Yes, we are all individuals, but our movement is a united and powerful force strong enough to change America, and to change the world.
So thank you.
We’re in this together. We need each other. And when we stand together, we win together.
When I say “we” are in this together, you might wonder who exactly I’m talking about.
Let me be absolutely clear. I am at this conference to carry a simple message: Issues of young workers, human rights, and women’s equality are important to our entire movement. This is no sideline interest or side project. These are mainstream issues, central to every single person who works for a living.
When it comes down to it, almost every challenge we face is a work issue. The ugly practice of chattel slavery was a work issue. Jim Crow was a work issue. The high student debt and gross unemployment and underemployment rate among millennials is a work issue. The gender gap is a work issue. Mass incarceration and #blacklivesmatter are work issues, because part of the problem is a lack of good jobs. The fact that LGBTQ workers can still be fired in half of all states is a work issue. And fight for immigration reform is in many ways a fight to give immigrant workers dignity on the job.
These aren’t your issues and my issues, these are our issues.
Let this conference be more than just another get-together. Let’s use it to renew our dedication. Let’s use it to spark that light in our hearts, to spur us to unite in public and in purpose. This is our time to join hands, to raise our voices and to build a movement that can lift all of us, together.
I want to tell you a story that captures this challenge in several different ways. It’s about a mom I know, a young black woman named Natasha Maye who works as a nurse’s aide in Philadelphia. When her paycheck was short the first time, she thought it was a mistake. But it happened again and again. She looked over her hours and realized it was systematic, intentional. So she tried to fix the problem without becoming a problem. She was nervous. I’m sure you can understand. She needed the job.
I admire Natasha’s courage. I don’t know what’s harder than standing up for yourself when it seems like you’re all alone, but that’s exactly what she did. In doing so, she found out she was not alone. At her employer’s headquarters, she saw her coworkers, arguing about hours cut from paychecks. She even saw supervisors call the police on those who were speaking out. She was scared they’d call the cops on her, too, but she needed justice. And she needed the money she had earned.
She was embarrassed to even be in this predicament. That’s what she told me. She said all she wanted to do was break down and cry. But she needed to feed her children and pay her rent. And then Natasha’s employer fired her, without ever settling up the money they owed her.
The good news is Natasha and her coworkers filed a class action suit against the company. She got involved in her local labor movement, and now she’s a powerful activist against wage theft and for justice in a hundred different ways.
I told you that story because Natasha hadn’t even heard of the term “wage theft” before it happened to her, and it happens to workers all over the place every single day. It’s an epidemic. But it’s about a lot more than wage theft.
I told you Natasha’s story because employers target anyone they think is vulnerable. They’ll target women, millennials, immigrants or just someone who seems desperate for the work, who seems more likely to suffer than fight back.
Natasha’s story is important, too, because when she fought back, her energy and enthusiasm helped fuel a grassroots movement for justice in Philadelphia. A recent study there, the first of its kind, gave us a detailed look at the effects of wage theft, and it’s bad. And today, the fight against wage theft in Philadelphia is powerful and growing.
And finally I told you this story because it’s about justice and basic dignity for men and women, for families, for women of color, for young workers and for an entire community.
We’re not fighting against some hard-to-grasp idea of injustice. We stand against the specific actions of those in power who choose to cheat working people, who try to hold us down to enrich themselves. From erratic schedules to unequal pay, from high unemployment in communities of color to workplace discrimination against those of us who are transgender, these are the result of policies and decisions, and activism can help erase them.
We are here at this conference because we know work matters. Whatever you do, no matter how humble, you do your part to make America run.
And together, we’ll rise to create an economy guided by this idea, an economy that works for working people and helps all of us live better lives.
Pretty much everywhere I go these days, I talk about the need to raise wages. It’s an overarching idea that encompasses all of our priorities, but it’s about much more than dollars and cents. It’s about basic human dignity. It’s about our ability to live good lives, to raise families if we want to and to take part in our communities.
We know the single best way to raise wages is with a union. And our unions need to be about more than dollars and cents too.
Raising wages also means paying closer attention to everyone who is discriminated against, anyone who’s targeted, who’s hurting, who needs someone to stand with them.
It’s critical, because the idea that some people are “others,” that some people are different than us, is a lie. It keeps us divided. It keeps us down. The truth is simple: When you get hurt, it hurts me. When I get hurt, it hurts you.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, a Native woman in Edmonton, or a transgender man in Washington, DC, you are not some “other.” You are my brother, my sister. Our fates are intertwined. When you rise, I rise. We rise together. Those are our values.
If we want our world to reflect our values, we’ll have to work for it.
We’ll work for it. We’ll stand for it, for justice. We’ll get up together. We’ll yell together. We’ll mobilize and march together. Today. Tomorrow. Every single day. The Machinists will get it done. I love this union. I really do. God bless you, and keep up the fight! Thank you!