Thank you, Rebekah [Friend], for your words of introduction.  I'm happy to be in Arizona and at the Arizona State Fed's 53rd Biennial Convention.  

Rebekah, let me thank you for your work and your leadership.  I particularly want to thank you for the work that you're doing on strengthening the relationship between the Arizona labor movement and the broader community.  You know that there is strength in solidarity.  It's not just a slogan.  

Arizona may be an arid paradise, but this state -- as too many of you know too well -- is hurting.  Arizona's official unemployment rate has hovered around 10 percent for months, but you all know as well as I do that the real rate is much higher — somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 percent — and that figure still doesn't account for the thousands of people who applied for Social Security early, or who simply left Arizona in hopes of finding work somewhere else.  

It's so hard to believe that people are actually leaving this state, because a few years ago, I knew so many who were moving here and retiring here because Arizona was where they were going to fulfill their American dream.  

Few places rode higher than Arizona on the housing bubble — that disastrous mirage of prosperity — and only a handful of places have been hit as hard by the fall.  

Nationwide, home prices have plunged more than 30 percent from their 2006 peak, and they're still falling.  In some Arizona markets, homes are now worth only 30 percent of their peak value, and Arizona still leads the nation in foreclosures.  

It's bleak in Arizona today, closer to a depression than a recession.  It's hard times.  Working people are under stress, the state of Arizona and its local governments are under-funded, and small businesses are struggling.  

The pain isn't unique to Arizona.  Working families are struggling all across the country — yet leaders everywhere are saying we can't afford to address our needs.  

But, sisters and brothers, America isn't poor.  Our economy produces more wealth than it ever has.  America isn't broke, but something sure is broken in America.  We've got money, but it's socked away in only a few fat wallets.  The wealthiest 400 individuals in America have more cash and assets than half of all the other families in our entire country put together.   

We have a real living example of the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us.  Just look at what's happening with ATU Local 1433 here in Phoenix.  Local 1433 members are fighting at the bargaining table for fair wages and benefits while Veolia's CEO made $2.2 million last year.  And in America, the corporation banked $1.4 billion in 2010 -- that's billion with a B.  

Do you know what kind of raise Veolia's local manager made last year?  Thirty-five percent.  But he's asking the bus drivers to take a 3 percent raise over three years — and to pay higher health insurance premiums that will erase even that sorry increase.  Take home pay for bus drivers will actually drop.  

That's what's broken in America today.  A manager gets a thirty-five percent raise, and the rest of us get a take-back.  

We see it in Wisconsin, Michigan and New Jersey, and yes, in Arizona.  

Whether you drive a bus or ride one to work, the basic American principle that hard work deserves reward is under assault.  But you won't hear that from the spin doctors, who use our tough economic circumstances to bait us into fighting each other.   When times get hard, politics gets ugly.  Maybe some of you saw the Tea Party Presidential Debate a few weeks ago, when the question came up of what should happen to a healthy young man without insurance who becomes disastrously ill.  

Ron Paul hemmed and hawed — but someone in his audience shouted "Let him die!" — and the crowd applauded.  

Friends, in times like this, people who have always been vicious get more followers, and the voices of reason can be lost in the ruckus.  

Friends, at times like this, our responsibility grows.  It's our job to be progressive leaders, to speak out for all workers, to talk about right and wrong.  

Sometimes you have to have hard conversations.  The two points I'm about to make are as hard as it gets:  

First, this labor movement that we love is shrinking, and has been for more than 30 years.  In 1964, union members made up 29.3 percent of the workforce.  Today, we're just 11.9 — and falling.  Today, among private-sector workers, less than 7 percent are union members.  

If you look at a chart of the fall of union density, another line runs right along with it — the fall in working family incomes.  And that's no coincidence.  

The second point I want to make is that we cannot rise from this erosion and rebuild our movement and America's middle class if we ourselves practice the politics of division -- of exclusion.  

Yes, I'm talking about immigration among other things. And I know this is a difficult subject here in Arizona and throughout America — a subject that divides our members and our families.  And I understand that.  I do.  

But since the beginning of time, people have always crossed borders in search of a better life.  And every single one of us — except our Native American sisters and brothers —belong to a family that came to this great country.  Some of our foremothers and forefathers made a choice, bought tickets and packed precious belongings for the journey.  Some made their way here without tickets.  And some had no choice at all. This nation was built by people who had little but strength in their hands and a will in their heart.  

Not long ago, our unions fought against discrimination, because we know that if a company was willing to pay a white man a nickel more than a black man, neither was earning enough.  Left alone, those five pennies held down both black workers and white workers.   

Today, we know we're getting held down, but it isn't a nickel that's got us.  It's this notion that some workers are "legal" and others are "illegal."  

Today, we know an employer can replace trouble-makers with workers who have no rights, no citizenship.  

That's why anti-worker politicians have always found ways to divide workers.   

On the one hand, they passed laws to criminalize undocumented workers, but they don't go after the employers that exploit them with the same vengeance.  

I believe in the rule of law.  But what does it mean to break the law when the law itself is wrong?  

Jim Crow laws were wrong.  But civil rights leaders broke them, and that was illegal.  

Our union organizers broke unjust conspiracy laws, and that was illegal.  

Sisters and brothers, SB1070 may be the law, but it's wrong.  And the Arizona State Fed should be applauded for taking leadership and standing up against it.  

You will have an opportunity this afternoon to participate in an immigration workshop where you will discuss the labor movement's framework for comprehensive immigration reform and it's five major, inter-connected pieces.  

I encourage you to attend that workshop.  

In the labor movement, it's time for us to look deeply into our core values at the solidarity that has brought us this far, and to ask ourselves who we are, and who we will be.  

Will we accept the politics of division, and join those who blame the uninsured for the health care crisis, union workers for disappearing retirement benefits, the foreclosed for the housing crisis, or immigrants and jobless workers for the jobs crisis?  

Or will we live by those words we love to say:  We Are One?   

With the stakes so high for working families, we need the strength of all of us, everyone bound by the common bond of work.  

For our labor movement to survive and thrive and to rebuild the middle class, we must expand our reach, and embrace the broadest range of partners and allies, and workers who haven't traditionally been part of unions.  The millions of unemployed workers — we can help make their voices heard. Our community affiliate, Working America, is mobilizing the unemployed and non-union, blue-collar workers throughout the Midwest.  

We're standing with car wash workers in Los Angeles, who suffer abuse and exposure to toxic chemicals every day, and they are struggling and winning union representation for a voice at work.  We're partnering with domestic workers —housekeepers and nannies — all over the country, who want and deserve the basic respect, safety and fair rewards work should supply.  

The AFL-CIO Executive Council recently approved the first new organizing committee charter in decades to the Taxi Drivers Alliance.  We're finding new ways to engage young workers — like AFSCME's Next Wave workers — and looking hard at what employment will look like in the future, and how unions should adapt.   

This December 1–4, here in Phoenix, our labor movement will come together with our community partners to focus on jobs, immigration, voter suppression, civil rights and community mobilization.  

America's middle class -- the greatest middle class the world has ever known -- wasn't built from division but from standing together, from unity, from deep solidarity.  

And at times like this, we must return to our source of strength.  

Alone we are just a voice in the crowd.  But when bus drivers stand with riders, when teachers stand with students, when private- and public sector workers come together, when we in the labor movement stand with our faith and community allies, then the numbers are on our side and a better future is within our reach.  

Sisters and brothers, work connects us all, all of us.  Aside from our family and our faith, our work is what defines us.  It's how we express ourselves.  And the values of people who work -- our values -- will trump the spiteful spirit of destructive politicians any day, and every day.  

Those of us in this hall, by and large, have good jobs and live a middle-class life, thanks to those who came before us, whose faith and hard work won for us a chance to live the American Dream.  But we cannot just struggle defensively to preserve a little bit of the good life for a few of us, as we all get worse off year after year.  

It's time for us to go on the offensive.  America wants to work.  

President Obama sent Congress the American Jobs Act to create and keep good jobs, and a plan to pay for them fairly.  

The future of our economy rests on us.  It's our job to convince every leader and every candidate to put America back to work.  

We need to make our voices heard, loud and strong for good jobs.  

With jobs, we can make real the American Dream for millions of our families.  

That's why we're launching the America Wants to Work campaign.  It's incredibly important to get involved with this campaign and the October 10-16 week of action.

Join the America Wants to Work Action Team by texting JOBS to 235246.  Again, text JOBS to 235246.  You'll get word about important actions and developments.  You can connect with local actions on the AFL-CIO website, and you can also post actions there.  

We need every one of you, and your members, so we can stand together.  So we can march together for jobs and the American Dream!  

We have to help everyone understand that our struggles —like the struggle of bus drivers working for Veolia —aren't just push-and-pull about a few dollars.  This is about whether or not America will have a middle class -- whether we can all rise together -- so we can rescue our housing market, support public schools, take care of our families and lead a decent middle-class life!  

With unity, we'll put Arizona's construction industry back to work, breathe new life into the American Dream, and secure a future for America's working families.  

With unity, we'll build a labor movement that's capable of winning lasting victories for hard-working families.  

A movement for good jobs.  

A movement big enough for every worker who wants to form a union to bargain for a better life.  A movement powerful enough to stand for and bring out the best of America -- the best in ourselves.  

We'll work for it.  We'll stand for it, together, Because We Are One.  And we will never, ever back down or turn back.    

Thank you, and God bless you and the work you do.