Good morning. Thank you, Michelle Luce, for that wonderful introduction. Truth is, I feel like I should be introducing Michelle for the purpose of making a keynote. Her life is and has been one of strength and courage, a model for us all.
It is such a pleasure to share this podium with my Local President Pam Wynn. I am so proud of the leadership that you have provided for our Local. I hope you are holding a spot there for me as Cleveland will always be home for me.
I apologize for not being able to be with you last night for the opening of the conference, but I am thrilled to be here now to take a few moments and share with you some of my thoughts about the future of our movement.
I am also sorry I missed Larry's passionate talk on the garbage workers' strike in Memphis 40 years ago and the murder of Dr. King. An occasion which has been remembered by a number of events this past week, including a disingenuous appearance by John McCain, the same John McCain that voted against the creation of a National Holiday in honor of Dr. King's birth.
Like most of you in this room today, I remember where I was and what I was doing when my mother told me Dr. King had been assassinated. And, I can recall from the news reports at the time that Dr. King was in Memphis to support striking garbage workers, a fact which means more to me today then it did back then.
At 14, I was already aware of the call of social justice through the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. But to be truthful, I didn't connect civil rights with workers' rights. Today I know that one of the greatest insurance policies for the protection of civil rights is a union contract, and so it is that today, arguably the most important piece of civil rights legislation in a generation has to be the Employee Free Choice Act.
Union contracts have been the great leveler of economic injustice, and access to a union contract should be the principle goal of the civil rights movement. And, so it is today in CWA we have an opportunity to change the course of our nation. A window has been cracked for us, and it will be up to us as leaders in this movement to crawl through that opening and force the window wide open, letting in the fresh air of economic justice to the lungs of working families of every race.
In 1935 when the Wagner Act was passed giving workers the legal right to organize, it was an act that was written to promote collective bargaining as a way to deal with the economic imbalance of wealth in our nation at that time. In 1935 before the act was passed, there was a larger percentage of the private sector workforce in labor unions than there is today. Think about that, before we had the right to bargain we had a higher percentage of workers in private sector unions than we do today nearly 73 years after it was signed into law.
And so as we watch the excitement of millions of new voters joining the ranks of the Democratic party, while the two best candidates for the White House our nation has seen in generations contend for their party's nomination, I can't help but wonder how incredible it would be if someday this was the kind of choice we had in a general election instead of a primary!
But as we watch the primaries unfold, we must realize we are on the edge of armageddon for the labor movement. Under the Bush Administration we have seen the pace of assaults on the rights of workers increase to an unprecedented level. The Bush NLRB has undermined voluntary card check. Our recent call center win in New Hampshire had to suffer through a decertification attempt, despite having a majority express a desire to have a union represent them.
And then just last week, AT&T Mobility techs in New York City, after we achieved recognition through card check, 30 percent of the workers wanted a vote, and in line with the decision by the Bush NLRB they were given one. Again, despite 50 percent saying on cards that they wanted a union. I am pleased to tell you that in the election, MORE members voted for CWA than had even signed cards!
Earlier last year that same Bush NLRB reclassified literally millions of workers, in the Kentucky River decision, which by the way doesn't involve Kentucky or a river. The decision allows employers to classify, almost at will, workers like nurses as supervisors and thereby making them ineligible for coverage under the National Labor Relations Act. They have consistently and without exception ruled in favor of employers and against unions, and this is all supposedly under a law which was written to, and I quote, to "promote collective bargaining."
But we cannot lay the blame for our woes strictly on the doorstep of the Bush Administration. The decline of the labor movement has been slow, steady and sure over a number of years. So, it is in this climate that CWA under President Cohen's leadership pushed forward the Employee Free Choice Act. Two years ago no one was talking about EFCA, not Congress, not the AFL-CIO, not Change to Win, not anyone, but Larry Cohen.
CWA, under President Cohen's leadership, made the passage of EFCA a legislative priority and we haven't rested since. Because of our efforts, we passed the Employee Free Choice Act in the House of Representatives by a substantial margin, including the support of all but two Democrats and 13 Republicans.
Over in the Senate the going has been tougher. Because of arcane rules which allow a minority to control the Senate, we need 60 votes just to be able to talk about EFCA in that chamber. Essentially, 41 senators can effectively block the will of the majority. And worse yet, in that chamber the two Republican senators from Wyoming representing 500,000 citizens have exactly the same vote and same power as two pro-EFCA supporting senators from California representing over 36 million Americans or two senators from New York representing 20 million Americans.
In the Senate we did manage to get a majority, 50 votes to 49 for cloture, but it is clear we have an uphill climb to get to the magic number of 60 to overcome a Republican filibuster. While each of the Presidential candidates has a plan for economic development, it should be clear that the best hope the middle class in the U.S. has, is a strong and vibrant labor movement.
Imagine a United States where like in Canada, one in three citizens is a union member. What kind of health care plan would we have in that environment? What would our trade policy be? Would corporations get better treatment in bankruptcy than a family overwhelmed by unpaid medical bills? If there is a single key to our legislative agenda, it has to be turning the 50-year tide that has been drowning the labor movement. With a more robust and strong movement our legislative and bargaining issues would have real solutions.
Passage of EFCA will be dependent on three things: (1) holding and building on a worker-friendly House of Representatives; (2) picking up a number of critical Senate seats, ideally enough to get to 60 votes, but that will take catching some serious breaks. And finally, most significantly, we need to elect a worker-friendly President.
I hate to be the voice of doom and gloom, but another four to eight years of an anti-union Republican in the White House might be the end of our movement as we know it. So, November 4th may well be described as our showdown with the future. In sports terms we would describe it as win or go home. And as a result, all of us will need to rally for the survival of our movement.
There is an awful lot of misinformation being spread already about what the Employee Free Choice Act is, so let me take a few moments and describe the three principle elements of it. First, it will give employees the option of electing to be represented by a union through a show of cards or card check. The card would clearly state they are waiving an election and want to join a union.
No different than signing a card to join the Republican Party or the NRA.
Despite what the Chamber of Commerce or the Club for Growth might tell people, it does not eliminate the option of workers having an election. Instead it gives them a choice: if they want an election they can have it, if they want to be recognized by a majority show of interest then that is their choice, not anyone else's.
Second, and in my mind just as important as the first, is arbitration to settle first contract disputes. If today you somehow, under our screwed up system, manage to win a representation election, the odds are still against you that you will ever reach agreement on a first contract. EFCA provides for first contract mediation and arbitration to resolve that.
Finally, it would increase the penalties for companies that break the law in trying to stop their workers from joining a union, including triple damages for back pay awards and a $20,000 fine for each violation of the law.
President Cohen met a month ago with Congressman George Miller. Congressman Miller asked Larry to help him deal with the fight that he knows is coming. He wants the names and faces of one million Americans who will add their support to the Employee Free Choice Act, and out of that request comes our Million Member Mobilization.
CWA and just about every other major labor union has pledged to collect signatures from 10 to 15 percent of their members. Fifteen percent may not sound like much, but for us that translates to nearly 100,000 signatures and pictures, a tall order to be sure. You will hear much more about this effort in your workshop tomorrow.
But employee choice isn't the only legislative priority of CWA. We have four key issues that we are focused on with the right to collective bargaining being only the first. The others are health care, jobs and trade policies, and retirement security.
Now if we are smart some of these can be dealt with simultaneously. We could actually fix our health care crisis with a tax on imported goods, like every other industrial nation. Victory in November would the first opportunity since 1993 for addressing the need for real health care reform in our nation. In the most far reaching strategic industry project to date, under the leadership of Vice President Annie Hill, we are in the process of training more than 120 activists in a variety of congressional districts around the country who will in turn educate and engage our members in the debate over fixing our broken health care system.
Just once before I retire, I want to be able to go into a negotiation where our members' health care, whether active or retired, is not on the line. Rising health care costs have been the silent killer of our contracts, draining money from wages, pensions and other benefits, just to hang on to some semblance of our health care protection.
And let's face it, as with the crisis we have in negotiating over health care at the bargaining table, if we can solve that problem, dealing with the issue of retirement security just became a whole lot more manageable.
If we are not successful in getting a President who will sign the Employee Free Choice Act into law, there may not be enough of us left to make another run at it four to eight years from now. I am not exaggerating when I say this is the watershed moment for our entire movement. Nothing we will do in the next eight months will be more important than seeing to it that we have a chance to pass employee free choice.
There are 10 states where we have the chance to pick up a Senate seat and a vote for our future: Virginia, New Mexico, Mississippi, Maine, Minnesota, Colorado, Kentucky, Alaska, New Hampshire, Texas.
You can feel the tension in the Republican Party as they see the tide turning against them. But they will not go quietly. They will use every device they know to try and divide us, to get workers to vote against their very own interests by using gay marriage, guns, or God. And even now, I can almost hear them rummaging around in their attic for an old tried and true wedge, one that served them for many generations: racism and sexism.
Oh, there will be plenty of stories about Hillary's tears or her laugh, and lots of focus on Senator Obama's middle name, but I doubt you see much about John McCain's famous temper. His fuse is so short that one of his Republican colleagues commented, "The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me."
And we will see endless clips of Reverend Wright, but how many of you here have heard of Richard Quinn? He was John McCain's key strategist in South Carolina the first time he ran for President. Quinn said, "King Day should have been rejected because its purpose is vitriolic and profane. By celebrating King, black leaders have chosen a man whose role in history was to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state."
Oh by the way, this is the same Richard Quinn who has advocated electing Klan leader David Duke and in his magazine sold tee shirts celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Or how about McCain's aggressive pursuit of an endorsement of Reverend, (and I use that title under protest), Reverend John Hagee. Hagee insisted that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights. And, we certainly don't hear about the fact that John McCain voted four times against the Civil Rights Act of 1990. Nor do we hear much about the fact that he has voted at least eight times against increasing the minimum wage, while insisting that the problem in the home mortgage crisis could be solved if people would just get a second job or cancel a vacation.
If we do our work, we can accomplish our goals, not just in our lifetime but in the next two years. My mentor in District 4, Bob Johnson, was fond of the Chinese proverb that the journey of a million miles begins with a single step. I would submit to you, that with the foresight that you demonstrated in passing Ready For the Future, and in adopting our Strategic Industry Funds, we are now a thousand miles down that journey of a million. We still have a long way to go, but we can march on in the confidence that these changes, that others might have only dreamt of, could become a reality if we commit to doing everything possible to build a political movement that is committed to our fundamental principles of collective bargaining, health care reform, trade laws that work for American Workers instead of against them, and retirement security.
Let's go from here and commit to pass the great civil rights bill of our generation, the Employee Free Choice Act. Let's do it for our sons and daughters, our grandchildren and our great grandchildren. But most especially, let's do it for Echol Cole and Robert Walker, the two Memphis garbage workers crushed to death as they were forced to huddle in the back of their garbage truck to keep out of the rain on February 1, 1968.
Thanks for the opportunity to be with you this morning.
