Speech | Corporate Greed

Trumka Pledges to Take on Wall Street

Washington, D.C.

Good afternoon. On behalf of the 12.5 million working men and women of the AFL-CIO, I am proud to be here to kick off this campaign.

I want to thank Senator Warren for her incredible leadership on financial reform and all of the issues important to working people. We have no greater champion. And I want to thank our outstanding partners. This really is a team effort.

Today is about rewriting the economic rules. It’s about making our financial system the servant, rather than the master, of the real economy.

For too long, Washington has reacted to crises instead of preventing them.

A bridge falls and we rebuild it.

Our economy crashes and we try to dig our way out of it.

Being reactive is valid and often necessary.

The Dodd-Frank legislation enacted in the wake of the Great Recession was a good first step.

It reined in some of Wall Street’s most reckless practices and brought newfound stability to our financial markets.

But it was designed only to deal with acute, urgent problems.

Now, at this time of relative economic calm, some are tempted to say “good enough for government work.”

But it’s not. We can’t sit back when it comes to the economic security of working families. It is time to go on offense. The rules should be written by and for the people who live in the economy, not the billionaires who live off the economy.

Here’s why:

  • A report released last week by the AFL-CIO showed CEOs make 335 times more than the average worker;
  • The UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education estimates manufacturing workers and their families currently receive over $10 billion a year in safety net programs;
  • Another national survey found that 63 percent of working people don’t have enough savings to cover a $500 car repair or a $1,000 medical bill.

The status quo is not working. By design. Many of our economic and financial rules were written by and for wealthy special interests. And even in the case of Dodd-Frank, too many critical decisions were left in the hands of regulators. We need a bigger and bolder approach.

The proposals at the heart of our campaign—taxing Wall Street transactions, ending too big to fail and restoring Glass-Steagall, making CEOs and hedge fund managers pay their fair share and providing safe and reliable banking options to all Americans—will drastically improve the way financial services function. That means more money in the pockets of working families and hundreds of billions of dollars to boost our economy.

We are going to fight for these reforms here in Congress and on the campaign trail.

It is time for Wall Street to serve Main Street, not the other way around.

It is time to invest in America again—infrastructure, jobs, education, technology, you name it.

And we simply cannot do that without a 21st century financial system that puts workers and consumers first.

So let’s get to work.

Thank you very much.

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