Thank you, Jim [Boland], for that generous introduction. It is good to be with you, my brother. Thank you for inviting me to this great gathering.

Before I begin today, I’d like to say a few things about your president. Jim knows how to build union power the old-fashioned way, and the new-economy way. 

He knows how to get employers to understand the benefits of world-class training and the highest-quality work. This union’s members can go head-to-head against non-union contractors on a level field and win every single time, because you can build a better mousetrap, and that’s something to be proud of.

But Jim knows how to go even further, to make the Bricklayers a representative of craft-workers and the industry to educate  large-scale commercial enterprises and the government about whether and how to retrofit masonry so it’ll stand up to an earthquake, so it can reduce energy costs and so much more.

He leads on craft-worker issues. He leads on working family issues. He leads on all workers’ issues. 

The truth is that Jim is a labor leader for the 21st century, and we need more like him.

Jim’s an Irish immigrant, as you know. So he understands first-hand what a mess today’s immigration system is and why we need to change it.

I’ve been talking a lot about immigration reform lately, because it’s important. It’s damn near impossible for the vast majority of aspiring citizens to navigate America’s excuse for an immigration process today, and these are people just like you and me or our parents or grandparents, who came to this country to follow the American Dream, to work hard and play by the rules to make a better life for themselves and their families.

Let me be absolutely clear about something. We do not want a nation with borders in name only. We want strong borders, but I refuse to sit back and accept a system like the one we have today where America has first-class citizens and second-class people who live and work among us but who don’t have a say in our democracy and can’t share America’s constitutional protections.

Right now, today, our nation has 11 million aspiring citizens who rent or own homes, who raise families and buy groceries, who work hard, who pay taxes and do their fair share right here in San Diego and in thousands of cities and towns all across this country—but they don’t share in the protection of America’s basic workplace laws, and something has to be done about it!

You know, and I know, most big employers couldn’t be happier with the status quo. They’ve got access to a hard-working, insecure and underpaid pool of labor. And if those workers make any noise, any at all, about forming a union on the job, employers are only too happy to prove that ICE is only a phone call away.

That’s wrong. That’s not American. That hurts all of us. That brings down wage standards for everybody.  And we won’t stand for it.

Brothers and sisters, the idea of throwing the word “immigrant” around as if it were an insult has never sat well with me, anytime in my life.

Jim, I know you don’t sit for that, either, and neither does your union. I want to give some special appreciation to Local 18 in Cincinnati and the prevailing wage work those excellent trade unionists did to win back-pay for a group of Latino immigrant bricklayers and laborers about four years ago.

Most people don’t know that those 27 Latino workers had been brought in to underbid Local 18 members, and as a result your Local 18 members lost a lot of work. But instead of getting mad or getting even, your local leaders teamed up with the Cincinnati Interfaith Council and started talking to those workers in Spanish, starting putting flyers under windshield wipers and started fielding calls from workers. You found out they were grossly underpaid, and then your crew went after that contractor with prevailing wage complaints, and you won. 

That’s solidarity where it counts. The Bricklayers know the true meaning of solidarity. You know that all workers must stand together if any of us hope to win much or keep it for long.

That kind of solidarity will serve America well in the months and years ahead, because that’s the missing ingredient we need to rebuild the American Dream.

In Washington, D.C., we’ve got Democrats and Republicans, but I don’t care about those terms. I’m looking for good trade unionists, people who care about working people, people who understand it’s time to lead for working families, follow, or get out of the way.

As I look around, I see a lot of old friends and some new ones, which is good, because you’ll be taking over before too long. You younger delegates and staff might not believe it, but us old guys used to be a bunch of young trade unionists. We’re not so young anymore. But that’s OK—it means we’ve got some labor history ground into us.

Labor history is instructive, and all of us can learn from the past. History helps us gain context for the present. And we can take those lessons and use them to shape a strong vision for the future.

We have been living through some tough and trying times as a movement. And it’s been happening just as politicians across America are launching more assaults on our ability to form strong unions. I’m talking about the right to work for less laws, and paycheck deception. History reminds us this isn’t the first time our unions have been under relentless assault. And I want to acknowledge that the losses hurt. Michigan hurts. Indiana hurts.

The job situation doesn’t feel good, either. Although it looks to me like the Bricklayers and the construction trades might finally be coming out of a long, long slowdown. 

Last year, America lost 400,000 union jobs. And when I saw that news, it just hit me in the gut. I worry about those members who lost their jobs. I worry about their families. And I care, and I know you do, too, about them—each and every one of them.

Those numbers are no accident, but the result of sustained effort by our opponents, who want to crush the futures of our members and silence our voices. The lives and livelihoods of real people are at stake.

The loss of those members and strong union density in our communities and our industries also endangers the institutions of the labor movement. Our unions have fewer resources to put into political battles, to lobby for working families on Capitol Hill and in the states, to bargain contracts and to help workers organize new workplaces.

The loss of those members makes it harder to mobilize and win the things your members need and what America needs. I’m talking about new federal rules to protect workers from silicosis. I’m talking about PLAs and Davis-Bacon and our struggle against wage theft and the destructive agenda of the corporate right-wing. And most of all, I’m talking about America’s need for jobs, jobs, jobs!

There is a common thread between the issues we’re pursuing -- issues like good jobs and protecting Social Security and Medicare. They’re more than issues, really.  They express fundamental American values and principles, values like our belief in the dignity of all work, principles like the spirit of democracy, and activism.

Sisters and brothers, these values and principles connect us all – and they have been a winning combination in American history since before the founding of our great nation, and they will never, ever go out of style.

So when I hear that we lost 400,000 members last year, it hurts, but I know there’s a different story waiting to be written. 

And that, sisters and brothers, takes me to a different number. The number is 40,000.

That’s the number of people last year who visited the page on the AFL-CIO website on how to form a union.

Now, I don’t know who those people are, but I do know that those individuals came to our website while searching for a way to use collective action to build a better life. Think about that, because our surveys show that these days most people -- this is something we’re working hard to change -- most people today don’t look to unions as an option to improve their lives.

Why don’t more members of the public see unions the way we do? I’d say we have a laundry list of reasons why that’s the case. The broken NRLB, feckless political friends and iron-clad political opponents, bad actors in business, but in the end, those reasons aren’t good enough.

We also know our unions haven’t done enough to change, to innovate, and reach out to today’s workers on their ground, not ours.  We have to do better.

And we have to remember every day that we can serve union members best by answering the call of every working person in America.

We know that from history. We are tied together -- the 40,000 and the 400,000 -- and the rest of us.

As Benjamin Franklin so famously said, “We must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately.”

Our goal must be to use the institutions of our unions to grow a genuine movement of working people—inside unions, outside unions, never heard of unions, private-sector and public-sector, white collar, blue collar and green collar. Then we can bring us all together.

That’s what the United Mine Workers did under John L. Lewis with the organizing committees that built the great unions of today, the Laborers, the Steelworkers, the Bricklayers and so many others. Our goal must be to take the tools of the construction trades—world-class training, multi-employer pensions and hiring halls—and use them every way we can.

The growth of unions in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s didn’t come about by accident but as a result of hard work, of creative and relentless work. And that’s what it will take to bring it about again today.

And, to realize that vision, we need courage and a belief that what seems impossible can be possible. We need a serious and appraising eye, and the absolutely certain belief that every worker, every single worker, deserves a voice on the job, and a chance to improve his or her life through collective action. America needs that now, today.

My friends, ours is an important job, a sacred responsibility.

It’s time for us to stop wishing the world were different. It’s time to make it different.

What we want is not too much to ask. A good chance for a decent life. Fair wages. Health care. A secure retirement. Education and a better life for our kids and grandkids.

That’s not too much to ask for the working people who wake America up every morning and tuck her into bed at night. That’s not too much to ask.

And when people ask you about the state of the American labor movement—and I know they do—don’t sing them a sob story of decline. Tell them we’re working on it. Tell them the labor movement still has a lot of fight left. Tell them we have no intention of going quietly into the night. We’ve got clear eyes and a goal in sight.
  
Brothers and sisters, we’re going to take our country back, because we build the schools and run the power plants, we drive the trucks and make the roads. We answer the call. We rise to the task. We do what it takes, no matter what the price, no matter how high the cost. Because this is our America!

And let me tell you, we have come too far to be turned back now. We won't back up. We won't back down. We won't be turned aside. We’re the American labor movement, and we will not be denied!

Listen, you know what I stand for. You know what we fight for on Capitol Hill and in state capitals. We fight for what bricklayers need to prosper now and into the future. You know that.

The Bricklayers have stood strong and fought back in the legislative and electoral battles, and in the workplace.

And you should know that nobody, nobody, plays a more important role in the agenda for America’s working families than the Bricklayers.

You have shown your worth, and all of us see you for what you are.
With your help, we will climb this hill and we will win! We will win together! 

We’re going to do what it takes until America works for the people who work in America.

It’s up to us to make it happen — working people want and need progress, and we’re not afraid to go the extra mile. The extra mile, that’s how we’ll take America back.

To take it back, we’ve got to want it, we’ve got to work for it.

We have to stand for it. We’ve got to fight for it.

We’ll bring out the best in our county.  And in ourselves. To build the future we know we can have, we must have for each of us, for our children, for our grandchildren. And we will never, ever, give up. We will always, always go forward.  And together, we will win, for our future, for our country.  That’s how we’ll rebuild the American Dream. That’s how we’ll win. Together! Together!

Thank you! And God bless you!