Remarks by John J. Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, National Press Club, on the Senseless Slaughter of the Good American Job




Remarks by John J. Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, National Press Club, 
on the Senseless Slaughter of the Good American Job
January 18, 2006


Thank you. I’m honored to be with all of you today in this prestigious 
forum. 

The American labor movement is the only organization that speaks 
exclusively for working families, and I thank the National Press Club for 
inviting me to amplify that voice.

There is no shortage of issues facing working families in our country.

We’re in a consuming warp of national disagreement in which one heated 
question flows like hot lava into another.

How do we clear a storm of corporate and governmental corruption that 
should never have been allowed to gather?

How do we stop the packing of our courts with judges whose views on 
workers’ rights and civil rights should have disqualified them from even 
being considered?

Indeed, what is the right way to conclude a war that was started the wrong 
way in the first place?

These are all huge issues that compel confrontation.

But we’re facing a question of even greater magnitude that is being 
ignored by leaders of one party and avoided by leaders of the other. And 
that question is: “What are we going to do about the destruction of good 
jobs in our country -- the jobs that for the past half century helped us 
create the largest middle class, the most dynamic economy and the 
strongest democracy in the history of the world?”

Headlines from recent months chronicle the destruction.

From the Washington Post: “Consumer Prices Increase, Outstrip Wages.”

From Reuters, “China to Service United Fleet.”

Another from the Post: “Trade Gap Ballooned in October.”

A cover headline from The Economist warned: “Danger Time for America.”

A headline from the Associated Press: “Tough Times Ahead for Middle Class 
Worker; Manufacturing Jobs Vanishing From Our Shores.”

From the New York Times: “IBM Freezes Its Pension Plans.”

From the Wall Street Journal: “Growth in Medical Cost Slows As Firms 
Shift Tab to Workers.”

And another from the Wall Street Journal carrying the counter-intuitive 
headline, “Wal-Mart Urges Congress to Raise the Minimum Wage.” The 
Wal-Mart CEO said the company was urging the long-overdue federal increase 
because, and I quote, “Our core customers aren’t making enough money to 
spend enough money.” 

Finally, the New York Times weighed in with a story we already knew was 
coming: “U.S. Poverty Rate Was Up Last Year.” It was the first time on 
record that household incomes failed to increase for five straight years — 
and that record includes the Great Depression.

That Depression followed the only other time in modern history when the 
White House, the Supreme Court and both houses of Congress ALL were 
controlled by one anti-expansion, anti-working family, anti-union 
political party.

Our country was headed in the wrong direction then, so we took back 
control and charted a new course that spread the wealth and regulated the 
excesses of big business.

It is time to take control again. 

Of course, headlines can’t tell the full story, but they effectively 
capture it. And if I could write a headline for the story I want to tell 
today, it would read: “The Senseless Slaughter of the Good American Job.”

We hear and read a lot about the violence in our cities, and the word most 
often used to describe it is “senseless” — the death of a young man here 
in Washington, DC over New Year’s was characterized in the media as 
“senseless.”

It seems to me we should use the same language not just to describe wanton 
acts of physical violence, but also to depict the violence being visited 
upon working families and our communities by the killing of good jobs.

The senseless slaughter of the good American job has been going on for the 
past 25 years.

It’s at the core of a corporate-driven strategy to compete in the global 
marketplace by degrading work and workers, rather than competing through 
ingenuity -- competing through privatization, deregulation and 
de-unionization rather than by innovation.

Since 1985, the global labor force has effectively doubled, with the 
entrance of 1.4 billion new workers from China, India and the former 
Soviet Union. And in the absence of new rules to prevent it, corporations 
have pitted the new workers against American workers in a merciless race 
to the bottom.

The result has been a perfect storm of outsourcing, off-shoring, tax 
evasion, lay offs, work speedups, wage cuts, health care cuts, pension 
cuts, shifting risks, bashing unions and short-changing communities. It 
is a storm that has swamped the boats of middle class workers and 
destroyed the frail crafts of ethnic and immigrant workers. 

New York Times writer Louis Uchitelle describes with great clarity how we 
‘ve come to this state in his new book, The Disposable American, due out 
from Knopf in March, and I quote:

“Far more than in the past, America lives with a chronically floating, 
low-wage workforce, one that would not exist if the deterioration in pay 
and training, and the acquiescence to layoffs, had not made inroads into 
the dignity of work .” 

The failure of our national leaders to preserve and create good jobs is 
tattooed on the souls of 30 million workers who, Mr. Uchitelle explains, 
were involuntarily displaced from their jobs from 1981 to 2001. 

But wounded workers aren’t the only casualties of the corporate 
job-killing strategy. It is also a self-destructive strategy because it 
leaves businesses with consumers who don’t have enough money to spend or 
save.

It leaves government with more demand for public services and subsidies … 
and fewer taxpayers to pay for them.

And it leaves employees frustrated and distrustful of their employers, 
fearful for their future. 

For a capitalist democracy that runs on equal parts hope, 
self-sufficiency, innovation, productivity and civic participation, the 
corporate-driven strategy of destroying good jobs is worse than senseless.

It is just short of suicidal. And we have no hope of changing it unless 
we confront it. 

In just a few days in his State of the Union address, President Bush will 
present a far more rosy picture of our economy and the situation for 
working families in America.

He will likely say what he said to the Chicago Economic Club two weeks 
ago, when he bragged: “The American economy heads into 2006 with a full 
head of steam .... the American consumer is confident.”

But what if he told the American people the truth? What if he said: 
“Our country is headed in the wrong direction. The wrong direction on 
jobs. The wrong direction on health care. The wrong direction on 
retirement security. And the wrong direction on education. You know it 
and I know it, and it’s time to do something about it.”

President Bush won’t do that, but if I were President of the United 
States, I’d use this State of the Union speech to cement my place in 
history.

If I were President, I would admit to the joint session of Congress that 
we’re barely creating enough new jobs to match the growth in our workforce 
— and increasingly, the jobs we are generating are dead-end alleys.

I’d remind Congress that our trade policies have translated into over 2 
million lost manufacturing jobs … just since 1998, our debt to other 
countries is rising by more than $1 million a minute and almost $700 
billion in U.S. Treasury notes are held by China alone.

I’d insist that we reverse those policies and lift workers everywhere by 
demanding that workers’ rights be afforded as much protection as corporate 
interests in all present and future trade agreements.

I’d propose making it illegal for companies to buy or sell merchandise or 
services manufactured or provided under sweatshop working conditions. And 
I’d help working people in other countries rise above their burdens by 
telling Congress we’re going to lead the world in effective assistance and 
debt relief to developing nations. 

I’d demand the repeal of our tax laws that encourage corporations to send 
jobs overseas. I’d call for a bill mandating that all goods and services 
paid for with tax dollars at any level be produced or provided in this 
country. 

And I’d challenge Congress to quit stalling and pass universal health 
coverage this year so our workers can live secure lives and our 
corporations can compete in the global marketplace.

If I were president, I would tell corporate America it’s time to re-join 
our national community by investing more in workers and less in their 
executives. 

I would give Congress a budget doubling the money we are spending on job 
training and education, a budget restoring the dreadful cuts in our 
college loan program. 

And I would tell them to get busy and give hope a chance by raising the 
federal minimum wage.

If I were President, I would expose the 150 major U.S. corporations that 
are using the bankruptcy courts to abandon their commitments to provide 
guaranteed pensions to the workers who have enabled them to grow and 
profit. 

And I would follow presidential tradition in my State of the Union address 
and introduce a special hero --- a flight attendant who’s been flying with 
United Airlines for 28 years and counting on a pension payment of about 
$3,000 a month to add to her Social Security when she retires five years 
from now.

A backroom deal cut that pension payment to $1200 a month and now she’s 
threatened with further wage and benefit cuts at a time when her CEO is 
being assured total compensation of more than $50 million a year.

My hero’s name is Cheryl Burns, and she’s with us today — a living example 
of what’s happening to good jobs and American workers. (recognize Cheryl 
Burns)

Finally, if I were President, I would ask every member of the House and 
Senate to sign on as a sponsor to the Employee Free Choice Act, which 
guarantees the freedom of America’s workers to come together in unions and 
bargain for a better life.

It will stop American employers from taking advantage of our laughable 
labor laws to destroy the unions that keep our middle class healthy and 
growing. It will make it possible for workers to join unions and add 
their voices to our campaign for the good jobs that guarantee economic 
equality and a strong democracy.

And then, my friends, my brothers and sisters, we can get on with the job 
of turning this country around.

Of course, we don’t expect President Bush to do any of those things. But 
we do expect more from our elected leaders in Congress, and we’re going to 
demand it.

We also know we have to expect more and demand more from ourselves.

And we know that to change the course of our country, we not only have to 
think outside the box of corporate control our nation has been trapped in, 
we have to get rid of the box.

Some may doubt that we have the capacity to do that because of the tragic 
split that took place in our movement last year. To twist a phrase made 
famous by a previous Presidential Administration … I would urge everyone 
to watch what we're doing -- and not what the doubters are saying.

Two years ago, we took a major step toward changing our country’s 
direction when we founded “Working America,” our community affiliate for 
workers who don’t have a union where they work. “Working America” is the 
most significant innovation our movement has undertaken in decades, and in 
its first year, we signed up 1 million members who wanted to fight for 
change as a part of the AFL-CIO.

Last year, Working America members worked hand-in-hand with our collective 
bargaining members to defeat Social Security privatization, and in 
November they helped break the bonds of exurban county politics to bring 
home a win for Tim Kaine in Virginia.

Last month, Working America launched a new online “Job Tracker” that 
allows its members and the public to discover not only who’s sending our 
jobs overseas, but which companies are violating our health and safety, 
environmental and labor laws. 

By the end of this year, “Working America” will have 2 million members and 
it’s helping us build the broader and more powerful movement we need.

We’re also investing $50 million in our National Labor College so we can 
train our leaders of the future. 

And we’ve stepped up our Voice@work campaign to expose employers who 
interfere with workers’ right to form and join unions. And in December, 
Voice@work put 60,000 people on the streets – our biggest mobilization in 
15 years -- to speak out for the right of workers to choose to join a 
union. 

Today, the Employee Free Choice Act has 208 co-sponsors in the House, 
including 10 Republicans, and 42 in the Senate -- and we will pass it 
while George Bush is in office.

If I were President, I would sign it.

At our convention last July, we made an historic decision to increase our 
emphasis on helping new members organize so we can build the strength we 
need and working families deserve.

More and more of our unions are running aggressive organizing programs and 
we’re seeing the results in successes like the Communications Workers 
victory for 16,000 workers at Cingular Wireless just since July.

This campaign shows what happens when employers respect workers’ freedom 
to have a voice on the job, and the organizing being done by our unions 
shows just how determined we are to increase our strength in our 
workplaces and in our nation.

We also decided to devote more resources to legislative and political 
advocacy and to fold up our election-cycle model and replace it with a new 
grassroots program that works year-in and year-out to build a vibrant 
movement and hold our elected representatives accountable.

We used our new model last November in California -- and we damn near 
“terminated the Terminator.”

This month, we used that new capacity to let our members know “who’s on 
our side” by issuing detailed “report cards” on the voting records of 
members of Congress.

And we’re taking our fight to break out of the corporate box to the state 
level.

You saw the first crisp punch in that fight when we overrode Governor 
Ehrlich’s veto of our “Fair Share” health care legislation in Maryland.

We’ve decided to break free from the gridlock of Washington and the 
hammerlock of national corporate health care lobbyists by launching “Fair 
Share” campaigns in more than 30 states. We need a simple national 
health care plan that covers everybody — the failure of Bush’s complicated 
Medicare prescription drug benefit demonstrates that. But if they 
won’t give us a fair health plan covering all families in all 50 states, 
we will “give them hell” in all 50 states.

We’re also breaking out of the corporate box by expanding our work with 
student activists and our other allies to pass living wage initiatives on 
campuses and in cities nationwide -- and by mounting campaigns in 26 
states to increase state minimum wage levels.

More than 7 million workers would get a raise if the federal minimum wage 
were increased from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. But we’re not waiting any 
longer for Congress to find its conscience.

We believe Members of Congress need to do more than find their collective 
conscience, they need to break out of their own corporate box by 
rediscovering their ethics and reconnecting with the people they were 
elected to serve.

We’re challenging our elected officials on both sides of the aisle to 
change the laws regulating lobbyists, and change the rules governing their 
own behavior.

And once they clear away the corporate clatter, they’ll be able to hear 
the voices of working families and get our country back on the right 
track.

Someone once said, “There are two things we must give our children. One 
is roots and the other is wings.”

When I was growing up in the Bronx, our family and our church provided the 
roots, and my dad’s union provided the wings – in the form of a good job 
with decent benefits so he and my mom could lift up my sisters and brother 
and me.

Unions are also the wings for our communities and for our entire way of 
life, because we help guarantee a level of prosperity for everyone, 
because we fight the abuse of corporate power, and because we provide a 
real voice for workers in politics. 

The AFL-CIO and our unions are committed to be the wings of hope for 
working families and for America, and we will continue to spread them wide 
on behalf of good jobs, fairness and economic and social justice.

Thank you and God bless all of you and your families, and God bless 
America.

Contact: Lane Windham, 202-637-5018


Copyright © 2006 AFL-CIO