You can’t think about Labor Day without thinking of one of the real heroes for workers, Ted Kennedy. From being the original sponsor in the Senate of the Employee Free Choice Act to his championing of a fair minimum wage and civil rights and health care and so much more, his legacy lives on in the lives of millions of Americans. 

This Labor Day, working people are standing at the edge of a huge wave of change. Almost a year ago to the day, working people rallied behind an Illinois Senator in Denver to nominate him for the presidency of the United States. 

A year later, we’re excited about the direction President Obama is leading us and what happens next. He’s leading the way on health care, working relentlessly to create jobs and put people back to work, and supporting workers’ freedom to form unions to restore the middle class and build an economy that works for everyone. 

It’s been an energizing year for working families, but it’s also been a hard one. For years we worked against the loss of health care, the loss of manufacturing jobs, the refusal to put any brakes on corporate greed and the refusal of our government to support working people under President Bush. The Bush legacy is devastating.

Now we are eager to ensure that we rebuild an economy in which working people’s work is valued, where CEOs don’t make hundred of times what average families do, where everyone can see a doctor and not lose a home because of abuses in the system.

Young workers in particular must be given the tools to lead the next generation to prosperity. The national survey we’re releasing today shows just how broken our economy is for our young people and what’s at stake if we don’t fix it. The energy and action that union families poured into the 2008 election hasn’t slowed since November.

Hundreds of thousands across the country have written letters, made calls to Congress, turned out for town halls and rallied for affordable health care, good jobs and the freedom of workers to join unions and bargain for a better life. Every day, people are drowning from the costs of health care, and many die because they don’t have access to the kind of health care that saves lives. We cannot be satisfied with the status quo. We must bring down costs and provide quality, affordable health care for everyone, building on what works today. 

We believe that the choice of a strong public health care option is essential to that goal. And we must put people back to work and invest in the jobs of the future. We need to create good, family supporting jobs that can lift up communities and get families out of debt and into prosperity. That’s why restoring the freedom of workers to form unions is so crucial.  Without the freedom to bargain, workers can’t get their fair share from corporations. We must pass the Employee Free Choice Act—and we will. 

This Labor Day also ushers in a change for me personally. After 14 years, I will be stepping aside as president of the AFL-CIO. New officers will be elected at the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh in two weeks, and I look forward to seeing Rich Trumka elected president and Arlene Holt Baker re-elected executive vice president. I’m proud of the work we’ve done to rebuild and retool the union movement. 

Today, the AFL-CIO is a voice for all working people. We’ve built the nation’s single strongest grassroots political action movement to work for progressive change. We’ve added 3 million voices for change by founding Working America, our affiliate for people without a union on the job. We’ve strengthened our movement in states and cities, made real gains in leadership diversity and opened up the labor movement through new alliances with communities of faith, academics, students and more—and through new partnerships with worker centers and workers who are doing groundbreaking organizing on their own.

Groups like the National Day Laborers Network, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, the Domestic Workers in New York, the Immokalee Workers in Florida>And we’re helping lead powerful new community-based organizing campaigns like the Los Angeles Carwash campaign.  We’ve changed the conversation on trade in our country by refocusing it on workers’ rights around the world, and developed landmark policies in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. 

We took on corporations, from Enron to AIG, and showed what their irresponsibility and greed does to all workers.  We worked to create a more unified voice for workers through our historic partnership with the National Education Association.

And today we stand on the cusp of passing health care reform and major labor law reform—a result of 5 years of grassroots organizing and 14 years of political work.  The work doesn’t end and I plan to remain active as a “labor warrior at large.”