Welcome to the AFL-CIO! Thank you Cathy [Feingold] for that introduction and for your leadership. Thank you to our partners FES and Working America for helping put this event together. And I want to welcome all of our distinguished guests who have traveled here from far away. Special thanks to Sharan [Burrow] and Luca [Visentini] for your commitment to workers around the world.
Let’s face it, we can no longer afford to dismiss the rise of the right and the impact it is having on working people in the United States and abroad. Last week, Donald Trump became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. This thing is real. And it is not going away.
But Trump’s rise didn’t just happen in a vacuum. In America, this moment has been coming for some time.
So how did we get here? And what can we do about it?
For decades, politicians from both of America’s major political parties have tilted the economic rules in favor of the corporate elite. Wall Street referees were taken off the field. There were trade deals like NAFTA and CAFTA that benefited corporations at our expense. Jobs were lost and not adequately replaced. We failed to make needed investments in infrastructure and energy and job training. The right to join and form a union was attacked in board rooms, legislative halls and at the ballot box. And when all of this led to an economic crisis, we implemented austerity measures that continue to erode social protections, wages and workers’ rights.
Just like Donald Trump didn’t just appear out of thin air, our economy didn’t get upside down on its own. It is the result of deliberate polices aimed at consolidating wealth in the hands of the few.
Wages have been flat for decades. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. And union density has fallen from a peak of 35 percent to just over 11 percent, with only 6 percent of private sector workers organized today.
Americans are fed up. We work hard, play by the rules and take care of ourselves and our families. Yet we keep being asked to do more with less. Less jobs. Less health care. Less time off. Less retirement.
So when someone like Donald Trump says we’re losing, he finds a sympathetic audience who wishes more politicians would express the frustration they feel every day. When he rips bad trade deals or blames Mexico or China for our economic woes, his message is heard. And to people who are sick and tired of the status quo, Trump might represent a fresh start.
He also represents a delusion. In reality, Trump would make life measurably worse for those of us who count on a paycheck. He decries unfair trade, yet is on record saying outsourcing creates jobs in the long run. He has routinely attacked the rights of workers at his own company. And despite the fact that Americans haven’t gotten a real raise in 40 years, Trump says wages are too high.
He also viciously attacks immigrants, including the 11 million undocumented workers in America who work hard and want nothing more than a secure future for themselves and their families. His anti-immigrant positions reflect growing xenophobia here and around the world.
Trump is a bigot and a fraud. And we in the American labor movement are going to spend the next six months telling workers about his real agenda.
But let’s be clear, the rise of the right has not been confined to the United States. You know that firsthand.
Throughout Europe, you face the same challenges we do. Failed austerity policies. Rising inequality. High unemployment. And a migration crisis.
With these come disillusionment, and now, a disturbing transatlantic pattern.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party currently leads the presidential race, jeopardizing the entire European Union from the top down. Until recently, this was a smaller movement but today it has rebranded itself to become part of Europe’s radical right.
Denmark is experiencing similar trends with the Danish People’s Party running on an anti-Islamist and anti-immigrant platform.
In the UK, there has been the rise of UKIP, which is taking a leading role in Britain’s EU “Brexit” referendum, with the hopes of using that issue to build a broader based extremist coalition.
And this right-wing resurgence is reverberating throughout Eastern Europe—from Hungary to Poland to Slovakia.
It is clear our opposition is global and growing. Today’s meeting is an opportunity to develop strategies to stop the rise of the right and reengage workers around a vision of shared prosperity. I greatly look forward to hearing your ideas. Our Canadian brothers and sisters may have some thoughts on how to defeat right-wing, anti-worker politicians. And all of you have invaluable experience building worker-led movements.
Here in the United States, that is our mission. We are mobilizing union members to build an economy that works for all working people. But we aren’t stopping there. We are reaching out to all workers, including those without a union contract. That’s why we started Working America in the first place. As a result, we now have 3 million additional members and supporters outside of our traditional structure who are helping lead our fights and elect our candidates.
We are going to challenge Donald Trump head on and focus anger toward the real villains: multinational corporations, Wall Street and the politicians who carry their water. We will reject the idea of building walls, whether physical or systemic. We will stand up to the forces that are trying to stoke our fears about national security and zero sum economics.
We have an opportunity to make real lasting change, to be the ones who write the economic rules. But it will not be given to us. It’s something we have to win. It will rise from our activism and our collective voice.
That’s what I want to leave you with today. Identifying, confronting and exposing the right is a global challenge that requires a global solution. In each of our countries, we have seen the beginnings of a worker uprising that has the potential to carry our agenda forward. We need to foster and grow that movement so it can beat back threats and go on offense for good jobs, raising wages, broadly shared prosperity and bigger, stronger unions.
Working together, I am confident we can do exactly that.