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Trumka: This Is Our Moment to Lead |
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While union members played a key role for the incredible victories of Barack Obama and the new Democratic-majority Congress, it was just the first step in reclaiming America, says AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka.
Speaking Monday at the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) convention in Las Vegas, Trumka said we must build on last year’s wins.
What matters isn’t the battle we won last year; it’s whether we’re going to take advantage of this moment and build the labor movement we need to create the America we want—the America every worker deserves.
Workers will create that America by educating, agitating, mobilizing, organizing and building a growing, fighting, winning American labor movement, Trumka said.
Even though it wasn’t organized labor that got us into this mess; we are the people who can lead America out of it.
But we can only do it if we seize this moment—we can only do it if we act now—we can only do it if we provide the leadership working people are demanding.
To lead America out of this mess, Trumka says, the union movement must be more aggressive and effective and create strategies that appeal to young workers “who are going to graduate from high school and college and go to work in a low-wage economy where temp jobs and freelance work are becoming more the rule than the exception.”
The labor movement can’t ask the next generation of workers to change how they earn their living to fit our model of collective bargaining.
No! We have to change our approach to better meet their needs.
He challenged delegates to think beyond passing the Employee Free Choice Act and look at how to take advantage of the legislation when it becomes law.
[Passing the bill is] not enough: We need to have a strike force of 1,000 professional organizers whose only goal is to see to it that every worker who wants a union contract gets a union contract.
He also stressed the need for the house of labor to be united and appealed to unions outside the federation to affiliate.
When corporate America looks at us they don’t care which unions we come from; the only thing they see is a threat—the labor movement.
We need those unions to affiliate because, if they don’t, this moment—this incredible opportunity to rebuild the labor movement—will slip through our fingers like sand.
We will win back America, Trumka said, “because we know that what binds us together is so much more important than anything that can drive us apart.”
You can read Trumka’s entire speech here.
3 Comments
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Mr. Trumka,
I hear your message loud and clear-”more of the same”
we need LEADERSHIP and we are looking in your direction.
Labor is obviously split, business despises us, workers want nothing to do with us, public opinion rates us about the same as congress.
More of the same is not working. we need to work on things that do, the message is not to agitate and fight, it is to compromise, work together to get the job done with workers ourselves and business. We seem to forget the customer as well. If we are so great why aren’t workers flocking to us, if they were, we wouldn’t need the politicians would we? (I believe we have learned our lesson on those politicians haven’t we, again).
Labor unions are one of the greatest institutions in the world and I am solidly behind the cause, I believe in them and I am proud of us but, we have to confront the mistakes of the past and correct them in order for us to thrive.
LEADERSHIP, LEADERSHIP, LEADERSHIP Mr. Trumka we are watching and waiting.
The last thing unions need to do is “compromise”. We’ve tried this cooperative “business” unionism for the past 40 years and its led us straight into the ditch. The union movement didn’t grow in the mid-20th Century on a philosophy of cooperating with business. It grew because it ORGANIZED workers to achieve power and it TOOK THAT POWER away from the owners and handed it to the workers. We absolutely need to agitate and fight. Workers don’t look to unions anymore because unions don’t win anymore. What kind of message about unions does year after year of concessionary contracts send to the unorganized worker? It says, “why should I pay dues to a union when they can’t protect my job, or get me a raise?” Unions need to stand up and fight. We may not always win but you definitely won’t win if you just roll over every time the boss tells you to.
Labor also needs to invest in a nationwide educational (and dare say it, marketing) campaign to spread the message of what unions are, what they do for workers, and why ALL workers are better when more workers are unionized. Right now, the general public doesn’t even know what a union is, or what they do. To too many people the word “union” brings up the image of gangsters and fatcats living off of workers dues and “lazy” workers who get paid to be on break. Its time the labor movement started doing something to change that perception.
I’m pretty sure you reinforced my argument, we have been beating the same drum for years with no results.
No we have not practiced “business” unionism and the only reason we have to accept concessionary contracts is our backs are up against the wall, it’s not rolling over, its just the facts. Also how exactly do we organize when no one wants to join?
I do agree that we need a mega dose of “image improvement”
it would also help to have some of our own members get involved.
again, its the LEADERSHIP we need improve on, everything else will fall in line.