Thank you.

It’s a pleasure for me to be here in Pittsburgh with you at  Netroots Nation. I’ve heard great reports about the sessions and also that you have thrown some good parties!

I understand that our friends from the Alliance for American Manufacturing even had batting practice at PNC Park last night. The Pirates sure could use some help so there may have been scouts in the audience  Although the biggest help, I think, might be getting a new management that would pay the good players to stay and play. Just like in a union shop.

Now I’m not going to come before you today and claim that I’m an expert at online organizing – that is why I’m here not just to talk, but to listen.

I grew up in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania not too far from here near Uniontown appropriately.

When I was growing up, and working in the coal mines, I certainly wasn’t tweeting about it! … I never would have imagined that … one day … the premier online organizing conference would be right here in Pittsburgh. And here you are, the Netroots Nation

In just a few years you  have grown  into a new force in progressive politics and also in American journalism. We are seeing a revolution in communications and we face a big challenge to keep progressives at the head of the curve. Our successes, including this conference give us hope that we will. Many of us in the labor movement have fretted over the death of the labor beat at newspapers across the country. But we are seeing today that your work in the blogosphere is the equivalent of “letting a thousand flowers bloom.”

You even have cross-pollination, our chief blogger at the AFL-CIO, Tula Connell, also cross posts at  Firedoglake and we share others’ voices on our blog.

Tula wanted to make sure I gave a shout out to the crew at Firedoglake!

And a special thanks to Marcy Wheeler for her great coverage of the crisis in the auto industry and its impact on workers

Marcy won the prestigious Sidney Hillman Foundation Award this year for her investigative work. Congratulations Marcy. We’re sharing progressive ideas at an increasing rate of speed and integration and through so many channels! You ALL have your platforms … in a marketplace of ideas. Labor’s ideas certainly are in the mix .We have many eloquent spokespeople and many supporters blogging regularly for the Huffington Post, at Daily Kos and others. Sam Stein’s work at Huffington Post has been outstanding and Pat Garofalo at Think Progress

So many strong voices , Josh, Brian and Eric at TPM . David Dayen, Digby.

And the phenomenal  work of Media Matters, Murshed, Carolyn Fiddler and the team for holding the traditional media accountable for it inaccuracies.

Thanks to your work we have some balance in reportage that has typically required conflict between labor and management before it merited attention. Blogs have introduced the notion that it’s all right to talk about the labor economy , about employment, jobs, wages, income. It’s not always about Wall Street investments and financial deal-making … profits … profits … profits.

Wall Street and the Whiz Kid financiers still are at the top of the news as if economic recovery is a magic potion they’re conjuring up. But it is the same old snake oil they were peddling that nearly brought down our economy. If we have seen anything it is that this financial system is out of control and spending billions of dollars to prop it up is going in the wrong direction

That is my top priority when I become president of the AFL-CIO to bring more focus to our economy an economy that is not working for working people. For the sake of the welfare of America’s families and for the prosperity of our nation the financial sector must be regulated.

For too long we have allowed our financial industry to be exploited by unethical get-rich-quick savants who game the system.

We need strong and creative regulation to make sure our financial sector serves everyone. It’s the same situation with many other important critical public sectors. We have allowed a rush to deregulate to burden us with transportation systems that don’t work. Airlines are struggling to survive … and strangling each other with cutthroat pricing cutting service to barebones unless you pay extra for bags even pillows. Fortunately we are rolling back the deregulation of utilities. It was a scam that threatened service and reliability of our public utility systems.

If you look behind the scenes of these deregulation plays you see the raw hand of power exercised by corporate executives who stand to make a fortune from the deals. Look at Ken Lay of Enron who met privately with Dick Cheney in 2001 and how the energy industry went on to define “energy policy” under Bush especially on deregulation. Of course we can’t pry the notes from those meetings out of the Bush archivists under court order and official foot-dragging. But I know you’re all out there pushing for information providing context and analysis and you’re not afraid to tell it like it is. I certainly appreciate that because that’s the way I am. I’m not afraid of the truth … even when it hurts

I will tell you that our labor movement is far less effective today divided as it is into two camps. Unifying our movement is one of my major goals. Even so I can tell you we are unified in purpose … if not in name. On issues that matter we are unified. We have come together for example to be major supporters of this conference. As president of the AFL-CIO I am going to be listening carefully to your voices and to the voices of  young people who don’t understand what unions offer them. Much of this disconnect may be due to the changing nature of work and work settings. But surveys tell us that many young people have written off unions as irrelevant to their generation and to their jobs.We don’t accept that and we intend to change that attitude. One of the resolutions of our new leadership of the AFL-CIO many of you met Liz Shuler on Thursday. She’s a dynamic young woman who will be a terrific secretary-treasurer of our federation.

One of our resolutions and Liz will be a big part of this effort is for the AFL-CIO to open up dialogues with young people about unions and the evolution of work. This forum is a part of that process. We believe it is important to the future and the well being of working Americans that we connect the labor movement to the broader  progressive movement. So we are here to listen, as well as to advocate for our ideas and our organizations.We’re learning from your language as well as your tools in thinking how we better connect with young people. But we have an important message as well: Unions are more critical today than ever in our history. In this uncertain economy after years of stagnant real earnings unions are the best hope for this younger generation to gain the standard of living their parents and grandparents enjoy. For 200 years unions have served to counterbalance wealth and privilege in this county and to help raise standards for workers to improve their jobs.Yes we are the people who brought you the weekend as the bumper sticker says. It was the labor movement that also won the eight-hour day, the five-day workweek paid vacations and health care.

And the labor movement was instrumental in winning the Family and Medical Leave Act that gives working parents the time they need to nurture their families. It was the labor movement that built the middle class in this country but we are now seeing that middle class sliding down the economic ladder.It’s no coincidence that people are losing their economic footing at the same time that unions are under siege.We have labor laws in this country that are tilted so far toward employers that unions have stopped using the process. Many unions are going around the National Labor Relations Board by seeking employer recognition through  majority sign up.

That majority sign up  system is in effect and working very well among many employer and employee groups. Majority sign up  has always been an option and has to continue to be. But we have been outmaneuvered thus far mostly outspent in the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act. We’ve let the opposition define the legislation as an infringement on a democratic process, the secret ballot. That’s bull and we all know it because the process that’s in place is anything but democratic. The petition system collecting signatures from a majority of voters is just as important to western democracies going back to the Magna Carta.

But that’s not the point.

The point is and this is a case we have not made well enough. The Employee Free Choice Act is a quintessential economic stimulus program. By making it easier for people to increase their bargaining power. We also help them increase their buying power. And that is an effect that trickles down to nonunion workers as well a trickle-down economic measure that actually works that actually DOES lift all boats. If you want to grow the economy you have to put people to work in jobs that pay well enough to allow them to pump money back into the economy.

That’s how we get our economy back on track by not only creating new jobs but also by empowering people who work with the ability to negotiate for better pay and benefits. Making it easier to form unions would be the best economic stimulus program our nation could undertake right now. People are so beaten down. Look at this economy. There are many stories out there … and you are telling many of them.

But have you heard about the 50,000 employees at Delta Air Lines that may soon have representation in the largest organizing drive we have seen in the private sector in a long, long time. That’s more than 20,000 flight attendants and nearly 30,000 ground personnel who would be represented by the Association of Flight Attendants – CWA and the International Association of Machinists respectively.

Delta has a long anti-union history using its “southern exposure” to foil their employees’ desire to form unions. But this time the employees have a very good shot thanks in large measure to the determination of their merger partners. Northwest Airlines flight attendants and ground personnel to never leave home without a legally binding contract. That’s a good story not being told outside of a couple of newspaper business sections. These are professional employees many with more than 20 years at work but unable to afford retirement whose compensation is at the bottom of the industry. Delta is slashing pension payouts by using a Social Security offset formula that penalizes employees even more. Or did you hear the one about the 120,000 AT&T employees struggling to protect their health care in contract negotiations with one of the most successful U.S. corporations. Let me tell you. Our intention is not to pick fights with employers. They are our bread and butter.

Labor wants mighty capital to succeed …to be the engine of growth that we need to sustain our economy … and our democracy.

But our system must be fair, no fair taking advantage of position or piling on.

AT&T employees deserve better from a successful global corporation that is making billions in profit off the technologies you and I hold dear … our connectivity. That’s right … check your iPhones. You know, my organization, the AFL-CIO is the foremost grassroots operation in the world. That is why the politicians love us.We have the people and a process to mobilize them. My intention when I become president of the federation in September is to concentrate on strengthening that grassroots operation from the ground up. We have many strong state and local federations bringing unions together working with many allied groups in their regions many of whom are represented here. It is our coalition, the people in this room that is really the world’s foremost grassroots operation.

We can bring the labor, environmental, anti-poverty, equal justice organizations all together under a common banner. And with the tools and savvy we have on our side we can disarm the dittoheads now invading health care town halls. We’re busy doing that right now, organizing peaceful and substantive contributions to the debate on health care. I think the aggressive, in-your-face, angry orchestrated blast at health care reform will backfire.

You are looking at the agent provocateurs of the health care industry, disguised behind some mysterious citizen-friendly-sounding coalitions. It’s disgraceful that these organizations are exploiting our seniors, lying to them about loss of insurance and using them to make their case at the town hall meetings. That is beneath contempt. 

Now my preference and the feeling of many in the labor movement is that we should have a single-payer health care system. It would be the most efficient most economical model … Medicare for All. But we are forced to deal with what is politically realistic and the single-payer system is off the table. But the public insurance option is critical to making current proposals work both for access and for affordability. The organized campaign against the public option is so obviously orchestrated by the insurance industry that you wonder how it has not been exposed for the cynical lobbyist lie that it is. Because labor is grassroots and not Astroturf. We can mobilize more people and more educated people. But we must beware the loudmouths and I’m not JUST talking about Rush Limbaugh.

There are a lot of folks over on the other side, the entire cast at Fox News that is content with drowning us out. They don’t need to make sense. They only need to make people angry. It’s important for us to stay above that, to resist the impulse to “flame” our opponents. Let’s let our ideas rather than our vitriol … dominate the debate

If we do … we win.

Now, I’ve always been a big believer in the notion that speeches ought to end the same day they begin. And I know you have a lot of business to conduct and I don’t want to keep you from it. But a couple of weeks ago I was reading a magazine article – it was about Bobby Kennedy. Like a lot of you here, I’m old enough to remember when Bobby Kennedy ran for president. It was around the time I first went into the mines.Well, as I was reading this article I remember how he would always say:

“Some men see things as they are and ask why, I dream things that never were and ask why not?” 

That’s who we are.  

We’re people who dream.

We dream of people working at jobs where they’re treated with respect and paid what they’ve truly earned.

Jobs people look forward to going to every morning -- not the kind they can’t wait to leave every night.

We dream of working parents being able to look into their children’s eyes and tell them that the money’s going to be there for them to go to college, or learn a trade, and that they’ll be able to raise their kids in a better America than the one they grew up in.  

And we dream of a nation where it doesn’t matter what your color is… or what sex or religion you are... or what country your family’s from because, in America, everyone ought to have a seat at the table.

That’s our dream ... and this is our moment to ask: “Why not?”

Together we can make this our moment to build a movement that can turn this entire country around.

And, I’m convinced, that together we will.

Together we will because we know that what binds us together is so much more important than anything that can drive us apart.

It’s the knowledge that there is only one way working people ever won in the past … and only one way we ever, ever will win in the future.

And it’s not by laying back,

And it’s not by sitting back,

And it’s not by kicking back.

Brothers and sisters, it’s by getting up off our rear ends and fighting back!

Joining, together.

Working, together.

Building, together.

Standing tall, and proud, and union, together!

That’s what it’s going to take to start winning, together!

Winning an America…

Where every man, woman and child who needs a doctor can see one!

Where every worker looking for a good job can find one!

And where every American who wants to have a union can join one!

Brothers and sisters, together, that’s the America we can win – and I swear to you that, together, that’s the America we are going to win!

We’re going to win because we’re strong!

We’re going to win because we’re united!

We are going to win because we are the American labor movement, this is our moment, and we will not be denied!