What I Do
IBEW keeps San Francisco's cable cars running.
IBEW keeps San Francisco's cable cars running.
Thank you for your kind and generous introduction, Barry [Andrews], my brother.
And thank you for inviting me to speak with you tonight, and I want to thank all of you for honoring my friend and brother, Rich Barchiesi and your other honorees, and who I am proud and humbled to stand alongside you as trade unionists.
Your Hall of Fame is important, because it honors solidarity and lifts up our values -- values that are badly needed today in Washington and Greene counties, and all over Pennsylvania, and frankly all across America.
Brothers and sisters, solidarity is a remarkable thing. You can’t put it on a scale to weigh it. You can’t measure it by the ton or in board feet. Solidarity can seem contradictory: The harder it is to build, the more powerful it gets. And when it really gets rolling, solidarity, true solidarity can come out the winner in any contest. and in the process it makes everybody stronger.
I don’t want to get into the specifics, but Rich and I, and I could mention quite a few others here, have been through a lot together—I’m telling you, a lot. We know the meaning of true solidarity. We’ve been there for each other, and we will continue to be there for each other.
And standing together with Rich, has been an honor, for me and everyone else in this room. Rich, you know the meaning of hard work. You know what it means to do everything within your power for your family. You’ve kept your focus on the livelihoods and safety of all hard-working families. And America is better off for it. Thank you.
My friends, you wouldn’t know it to see us today, but once upon a time Rich Barchiesi and I used to be a couple of young trade unionists. We’re not so young anymore. But that’s okay—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.
This part of America—the coal fields and steel and textile mills and auto factories—is rich in labor history. I’d go so far as to say Washington and Greene counties were at the core of the labor movement that built the strongest middle class that the world has ever seen.
I want you to know that, today, we’re rebuilding our labor movement using the same core values and vision we used the first time around
Sisters and brothers, we have been living through some tough and trying times as working people and as a movement. Our unions have been under relentless assault. We’ve had some wins, and quite a few losses, and we’re in a lot of tough fights today.
Right here in Washington and Greene counties, union jobs are on a steady decline. I’ve heard it said—and it may well be true—that Washington County no longer has any union coal mines at all. The job growth in these counties has been mostly non-union, and mostly in the service sector.
You know better than anybody that the so-called boom in natural gas is not an organized boom, and while there is some carryover to steel pipe manufacturing and other unionized work like grading and the like, the growth we’ve seen has not lifted the economy here overall.
Maybe some people in America think that’s not a big deal. It is a big deal. Let me tell you, I worry about Pennsylvania’s young workers, the young families. How will those young people live the American Dream? What hopes and dreams will their children pursue? How will they retire?
We’re in a tough situation, no doubt, and it’s no accident, it’s the result of sustained effort by our opponents -- opponents who want to crush the futures of working people and silence our voices. The lives and livelihoods of real people are at stake.
This is what record inequality looks like. This is what it looks like for working people to have diminished power and fractured lives. And you know what one of the biggest casualties is? It’s hope. I worry that our young people are growing up with lower expectations – they’re beginning to believe that they have to settle for less. And that’s just wrong.
The hard truth is that it’s on us. Our opponents may have been the architects of this long decline, but we’re the ones who have to fix it.
So we have to change—to gear up to meet the real needs of working people today—and tomorrow. And we will. When I say, “We,” I’m talking about the labor movement. I’m talking about those of us who work in Washington, and those of us here in southwest Pennsylvania. We have to adapt to the new realities while keeping our feet rooted in our traditional values.
It’s important that all of us reach out to young people to bring them in, to accept them on their own terms. Young people need the experience and the organization we can offer, and we need them, too. We’re part of the same community. It’s on us to welcome them.
You know, talking about change can be touchy, because it can seem to insinuate weakness, as if we’re admitting to a vulnerability. Well, working people and labor unions have been vulnerable in America for years. No amount of bluster or head-in-the-sand insistence that everything is fine will change that.
So, yes, working people in America and our unions are vulnerable, but so are our opponents.
Our opponents are vulnerable exactly because of what they’ve done to working people. You see, because of them, people need the security and stability of unions more than ever. The need is huge for anything that helps working people in America get ahead. And that’s the truth.
And that’s why, although the numbers today look bad for labor, I believe that the fundamentals are strong. The climate is right.
The working public in America is incredibly productive, but they suffer from decades of wage stagnation that have brought about the largest decrease in household income since the Great Depression. And yet we continue to work hard day after day and year after year because we believe in a better tomorrow, and we’re willing to work for it. We want a better tomorrow.
Young people continue to go to rack up debt on the thin hope that they can build a better life. We want that to be true. We’re willing to work hard to make it true.
New immigrants continue to come to America for the chance to work hard to get ahead. Together, we can make that happen with fair immigration rules.
And together, we can, and will, rebuild the American Dream.
Brothers and sisters, we know how to use collective action in strategic ways to build a better tomorrow. It works. Collective action was good enough for the founders of our nation. It was good enough for those who came before us in Washington and Greene counties—and it was good enough for the founders of our labor movement. And it’s good enough for me.
That’s what the United Mine Workers used under John L. Lewis with the organizing committees that built the great unions of the CIO, the Steelworkers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Communications Workers and so many others.
The growth of unions in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s came about because of hard work, of creative and relentless work.
We’re putting ourselves on the same path today. And we’re fueled by and pushed by the absolute certainty 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. American needs solidarity.
We need solidarity to win on the political issues we’re pursuing in Washington, issues like protecting Social Security and Medicare and honest immigration reform with a true and workable path to citizenship. These are issues that matter to working people. These are issues that matter just as much as our effort to honor and protect the right to vote in America, and to strengthen the rights of every worker on the job.
Fundamental American values and principles connect these issues, values like our belief in the dignity of all work, principles like the spirit of democracy, and activism.
With those values fueling us, we can stop wishing the world were different. We can 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 for the working people of Washington and Greene counties.
Sisters and brothers, we’re going to take our country back, because we build the bridges, we dig the mines, we teach the classes and 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. And we will not be denied!
Listen, you know what I stand for. You know my values. I’m a proud son of Nemacolin, Pennsylvania, a third-generation coal-miner, and I can honestly say that my entire community was my role model.
I learned about life, and about unionism, right here among these hills and valleys, fishing these rivers, and working in these coal mines.
And you should know that nobody, nobody, has helped shape the American labor movement, and helped build broad prosperity across America over the past 70 years, more than the working families from right here in Pennsylvania. I’m not counting out any one else’s contribution. I’m just saying that nobody can count out ours.
I am so proud to stand here with you, to celebrate unionism and to honor your newest inductees to this Labor Hall of Fame. Brothers and sisters, you’re leading the way, you’re carrying on the fight.
Pennsylvania has always stood strong in the workplace and on Election Day. You have shown your worth, and all of us see you for what you are.
You're America's working people, and you have every right to be proud, to stand tall. And the same is true all across America. You see, in every corner of our labor movement, we’ve been going back to the basics, getting ourselves geared up to make the changes we need to make, in ourselves, so we can win for working people again, and again, and again!
We’re motivated. We’re activated. We’re energized. And, frankly, we don’t have a hell of a lot of choice.
We will climb this hill and we will win, together! We’re going to do what it takes, and keep doing it, until it works, and until America works for the people who work in America.
It’s up to us to prove we can do it again. 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 children, for our families, for our future, for our country. That’s how we’ll go forward. That’s how we’ll win. Together! Together!
Thank you! And God bless you!
