Thank you, Jeff [Johnson], and thank you all for being here. I’m grateful for the chance to spend time with you, to hear your thoughts and ideas and share my own.

You are the heart and soul of the American labor movement – don’t think I don’t know that. You are warriors for working people. I’m proud to stand with you, and I am impressed with the energy and enthusiasm in this room, especially because I know that many of you work in the labor movement as volunteers on top of your day jobs.

And I know that for two long years, you have been leading state fights against paycheck deception, and for bargaining rights, for the preservation of PLAs, for voting rights.

Together, we have won some heroic battles – in California, you delivered an amazing defeat to Prop 32, in Arizona you defeated a paycheck deception bill, and here in Washington you’ve kept politics on the right track. You’ve pushed to create jobs and rebuild infrastructure, and you did it with a bipartisan deal.

And let me add that workers here in Washington make the best airplanes in the world, and you’ve cleaned up the mess caused by Boeing’s outsourcing and offshoring, and that’s one of the best all-around arguments for MAKING IT IN AMERICA! 

And yet, many trials remain -- our brothers and sisters in Alaska have been fighting a move to kill municipal collective bargaining in Anchorage and across the state.

But through the wins and the losses, we have strengthened our solidarity and our resolve for a mission that is now more important than ever – our mission of making life better for all working families and building shared prosperity in the 21st century.

I also want to recognize the Community Services liaisons in the room, and to tell you, as many of you know, that I am on the board of Worldwide United Way, and so I know what great work you do, and how valuable it is to our communities.

I know you were asked to bring young people with you, and many of you did. How many young workers are here with us? How many under 40? No need to raise your hands. I’m glad to see new faces among us. Good. We need to foster young voices, mentor young activists.

Young people often don’t know what can’t be done—I can remember feeling that way myself—and that’s a strength, not a weakness.

Sisters and brothers, young people have a quality—some people call it “critical imagination.” It’s the ability to look at the world and see new and different ways of doing things.

America needs critical imagination right now. America’s labor movement needs critical imagination. We don’t need to know why something won’t work. We need a chance to make it work. We need ideas and energy. All those millions of people who work hard and play by the rules need our honest efforts and, yes, our wild, off-the-wall ideas.

That’s how we’ll defend workplace rights – That’s how we’ll strengthen—and even re-imagine—collective action. That’s how we’ll turn all these challenges, all this economic turmoil and injustice, into positive change.

Brothers and sisters, it hasn’t been so long since you came off a grinding election – and you never even had time to pause.  The challenges never stopped, and neither did you.  I salute you for that. 

And now the pace continues.  The work at this conference and after is serious, and it’s long-term, and so is the work we’re doing to advance our national agenda.

With your mobilization and hard work, we can win comprehensive immigration reform with a real, workable road map to citizenship for 11 million people who are American in every way except on paper!  Eleven million people who work hard and love their families and love this country. It's time to win real immigration reform. It will make all of us stronger. 

And we haven’t forgotten about the need to raise the minimum wage, create good jobs, win paid sick days for all workers, and strengthen our democracy by expanding voting rights. And that’s just our agenda before breakfast!

In the District of Columbia, the fiscal stand-off continues. About that, I want to make one simple point. In all the jockeying about the federal budget—which has included years and years of trims and cuts—the only thing to begin to bring America back toward fiscal health has been the ending of the Bush-era tax cuts for the super-rich.

And when those cuts ended, none of the horror stories spouted by the hardline far-right House Republicans about taxing the so-called job creators came true. None of it. But that fact has not stopped them from holding our economy hostage. 

The bottom line for us on the fiscal stand-off is this – and this is our message to Republicans, to Democrats, and to the President:  Do not turn a blind eye to the worst inequality in our country in 80 years.  Do not even think about granting more loopholes, giveaways or tax cuts to the wealthiest among us.  And no cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Sisters and brothers, neither can we turn a blind eye to what’s happening to working people here and around the world.  To the falling incomes of working families.  To the layoffs as jobs are shipped off to countries where workers’ rights are non-existent.  To the diminished voice of working people in our political system that leaves the rights of workers vulnerable to billionaire extremists, and allows three- and four-year-olds to be callously thrown off Head Start rolls -- killing off the hopes of low income and working class families. 

Working people everywhere are vulnerable today, brothers and sisters.  It is a challenge we take very seriously. It is the central challenge facing our own movement.  And so this year, as we prepare to come together in convention in September, we know we cannot fight defensive battles alone – as important and consuming as they are. And we know this is no time for business-as-usual. 

We have a special task ahead of us.  And so I’d like to spend the balance of my time today to begin the big discussion about how to meet our challenges to build a better movement – a movement that can truly deliver on that mission I talked about earlier – of making working people’s lives better and building shared prosperity in the 21st century.

The fact is that nobody here is a stranger to hard times for our movement. We know the pain of outsourcing. We have seen the floodgates open and the jobs vanish. And we have never sat idle. We used the tools at our disposal to help service workers and public workers and immigrant workers organize. Each time our opponents closed a pathway to the middle class, we mobilized and organized and tried to build a new one.  And we have done some amazing things. 

Now we see that we can neither sustain the institutions of our labor movement nor effect the positive change that the people of America want and need without adapting ourselves on a much larger scale, without dramatically changing our tactics, and maybe more.

We’ve all seen the charts—the two dropping lines of union density and the fortunes of America’s middle class. We rise and fall together, not because we correlate but because we are one and the same. America’s union workforce has always been the ground floor, the foundation of America’s middle class. That’s not a new truth. It’s an old one. But it’s one that a lot of people need to learn again.

It’s up to us. We can’t expect anybody to change for us. We control one thing -- ourselves. We will be the change we want to see.

At the recent meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council in Florida, the council agreed to undertake a serious effort to listen to voices inside and outside our movement to point out a path for the future. The input you give here will help shape that discussion.

In truth, the process of self-reflection and transformation has already begun and many of you have been a part of it.

I’d like to read you one quote from last year’s listening session with labor and community allies from across our nation.  This was from one of our community partners in Los Angeles, and it speaks to the importance of labor as a progressive ally.

Quote: “Without labor we cannot build the movements we want to build. A lot of campaigns start with labor but are also in the interest of community. And community campaigns include labor because our communities are populated by working people. The best-case scenario is when we develop a campaign together.”

Yes. Together.

The challenges we face are shared challenges, and we can only solve them together – labor and community and all the allies of working people. 

And as we begin this conversation today, let me ask you to keep two things in mind.

First, I know you’re concerned about is resources.  You should be.  So let me say this: I hear you.  But let’s look at the whole picture.  The challenges we face are broad. Let's cross the resource bridge when we get there.  We'll find the monetary and human resources.  We’ll do it together. But if we start with that issue, we’ll shortchange the conversation.

And second, our primary job right now is not so much to figure out all the answers but to develop a conversation and a process that can generate ideas, experiment with those ideas and then take the ideas that work and scale them up.

That’s the difference between top-down and bottom-up problem solving. We don’t need to come up with all the answers ourselves, but we do have to ask questions together, be open, and be able to spot answers that might work.

So let me start with a big subject:  If we are going to build our movement, we must find a way to allow millions more of America’s workers to join the labor movement without forcing them to survive trial by fire in a workplace organizing drive.  How can we do that? 

In some respects, this may be that familiar case of what's old is new again. Think of the workers’ auxiliaries from decades past when workers who didn't have unions, or families of union workers could participate in supporting the union and in building community.

Ten years ago, we created one new form of membership in Working America, and since then the canvassers of our community-based affiliate have been talking to people at front doors in Nevada and Oregon and other states, and bringing people into the labor movement who don’t have the benefit of a union on their jobs.  

Now, with 3 million members, Working America has begun the critical process of reaching people where they work. Around the country, workers in industries – the film industry in New Mexico, construction and retail workers, for example – are joining Working America industry committees as a way to get closer to unions and begin to take collective action.

We are building other new forms of membership through partnership agreements with the National Day Laborers Organizing Network and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.  In 2006, the AFL-CIO adopted a new policy extending affiliation to worker centers across the country from New York to California.

We have other examples. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

So let me ask you this: 

• What could be the role of state federations and central labor councils in supporting and promoting all kinds of organizing and growth for the future? 
• What should your responsibilities be in this area? 
• What sorts of changes are needed to make that happen? 
• What do we need to do to reintroduce ourselves to working people in our communities?
• What changes do we need to make for people to see our unions as innovative and forward-looking and truly worker-driven?
• How can our unions organize more strategically, in growing industries, and what do we need to change so that we support one another in organizing – we help each other succeed – instead of competing with one another?
• Working men and women need a labor movement that can act effectively to build shared prosperity.
• What changes do we need to make for the AFL-CIO to be a more effective voice for shared prosperity?  To build more grassroots strength?
• And how can the labor movement better address racial inequality? How will we clear more pathways to the middle class?

Sisters and brothers, in 2012 our working families carried out one of our most effective election-year campaigns in recent history. We out-planned, out-maneuvered and out-mobilized a well-funded and organized attack against voting rights, the likes of which America has not seen in decades. The far-right blanketed the airwaves with negative ads, but we answered those with leaflets, phone calls and conversations on the doors.

And yet, while labor-endorsed candidates won many of the most critical contests, our nation’s capital remains stuck in a rut. And so do our states. Over the past four years, Wall Street profits skyrocketed, 720 percent while unemployment doubled and household income has fallen by 35 percent.

• What do we need to do differently in our political action and grassroots mobilization to build a real counterweight to the staggering influence of the 1 percent?  How do we mobilize the voices of hundreds of millions of working people that – together – have enough power to stand off corporate money?
• How do we unite our efforts and resources?
• How do we build a common agenda with other members of our communities, so all of our core issues are on each of our agendas?  What are the hurdles that state federations and CLC leaders need to cross for this to happen?
• And in particular, I’d like to know if you think working in partnership in communities will require different approaches to electoral work, and issue work, and organizing?

Our charge, always, is to build transformative relationships, not transactional. How do we encourage those transformations?

The best way to run effective local programs is with strong and capable grassroots labor councils. We know that. We know we need our local unions to be full and active participants. And we have been talking with the leaders of the AFL-CIO Executive Council and the state federation and central labor council advisory committee to develop and implement a program to get us there.   

One big step toward that goal has been taken with the decision that every state federation and large labor council will hire professional campaign managers able to run integrated campaigns and operate a strong community engagement program. That's a start. A good start.

We are committed, as a movement, to getting you the strategic help you need. We will make these changes together.

My friends, all these are major questions, difficult challenges. And yet I believe that we can accomplish what we set out to do.

We must, we can and we will broaden our base and build a new workers’ movement.

More than 120 million working men and women in America don’t have a union on the job, but those workers want security and opportunity for themselves and their families. Those workers want and deserve a fair chance to work hard, work with dignity, play by the rules, and earn a chance for the good things in life.

When we stand together with those who share our values, we are the majority in America. And when working people work together for a better life, it’s good for our communities.  It’s good for our economy. It’s good for America.

And as we grow stronger, we’ll be better able to help more workers organize and win the things our economy and our nation need. 

When we seek public dollars for infrastructure, those dollars create jobs, yes, but also a world-class infrastructure will make America more competitive in the global economy.

When we campaign for health care, immigration reform and quality public education—that’s good for union members, sure—but we are all better off in a country where all of us are healthier, where every child has a chance to reach his or her own potential, and where each of us has access to America’s freedom and justice. Where each of us can participate fully in our democracy.

And when we work to revive American manufacturing and restore quality public services, we help create prosperity and economic growth for all. 

For America to work for any of us, hard work must be fairly rewarded for all of us. That’s the basic principle of unionism. That’s the ground level of the American Dream!

Our Dream is built on the idea that our nation has room for millions of individual stories of success and solidarity, each following a basic line that’s as simple as it is beautiful:  If you work hard and do your part, you can do well enough to raise a family if you want one, you can give your children a better life and you can look forward to a secure retirement.

Brothers and sisters, it’s time for us to stand united for that dream -- to work together, to listen to each other, to learn from each other, and to win together.

Because we all want and need the American Dream.

We will work for it, sisters and brothers.  We will stand for it.  Together.  Each of us.  To bring out the best in America.  To bring out the best in ourselves, and each other. 

Thank you, sisters and brothers - and God bless you!

And now, let's take this opportunity to get our conversation rolling.