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Prepared Remarks of William Lucy to the AFSCME 37th International ConventionPrepared Remarks for
As we look to the future we continue to embrace the idea that a rank and file member can become the president of a twenty-six-thousand member local union, and president of a 120 thousand-member district council -- one of the largest in our federation. Veronica Montgomery Costa and the thousands of women like her are what this union is all about: service, dedication, commitment and success. All of us in this convention hall are family, part of a huge extended network of one million, four hundred thousand hard-working, dedicated members. No matter what our jobs - hospital worker, food service, school bus driver, correction officer, highway worker, engineer, or social worker. No matter what our circumstances, no matter where we come from, no matter what we've been through, no matter what tomorrow brings, we stand together, and when we fight, we win! From the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, the birthplace of our union, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the place of our first contract, New York, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Memphis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and a thousand other places. We and those who came before us have built the greatest family of workers and members ever known to the American labor movement. If there is one thing I know about this family, it is that there is room for all of us at the AFSCME table. And as far as I am concerned, every two years we have the best family reunion in the entire nation! And you can't grow without rising to the challenges of the times. That's why we are here. We have heard this week about our fights across the country. Pensions are disappearing and along with them, the means to a secure retirement. Contracts are being wiped out and bargaining rights are being stripped away. Our work is undervalued and unappreciated. The cost of health care is soaring, rising faster than the buying power of our paychecks. Our jobs are being sold out from under us to the private sector while elected officials take payoffs to break their commitment to public services. From Washington, DC to Washington, California, we are under an unrelenting attack, a vicious assault that is not just mean-spirited, but downright evil. But we cannot be discouraged. We should not be discouraged. We must not be discouraged. Because not only have we survived previous attacks, we have thrived despite them. No one has ever given us anything. We have had to fight for every single member, we have fought, often winning, sometimes losing. But always fighting. When I joined the International Staff in 1966, our challenge as a country was to figure out how to be truly inclusive. AFSCME was part of that great national awakening. Even as our union fought for the rights of public employees, we were on the frontlines of the human rights and Civil Rights struggles. We joined forces with Michael Harrington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in confronting the wide gap between our nation's ideals and its living realities. In the 1970s, our challenge was to end the second-class treatment of public employees. From state to state, we fought to win the same rights that private-sector employees had: to bargain the conditions of our employment, to negotiate a grievance procedure and a promotion process as opposed to a subjective system of favoritism. Our challenge in the 1980s was to continue using our political power to negotiate with tough politicians around the country for our rights - to move totally into collective bargaining in an era of corporate greed, excess and arrogance. In the 1990s, our focus was on expanding bargaining even as legislatures and governors were increasingly moving to the right. We had to grow while facing an onslaught of contracting out and privatization. We became known as the union that would stand up for all workers in the public service - whether their employers were governments or private companies. And in this decade, our call to action is to continue organizing new members and to protect our bargaining rights in an environment that is more hostile than any in recent memory. Our challenge is to stand up to the right-wing politicians, multinational companies, privatizers and budget cutters who want to turn back the clock on justice and undo the gains we have made: better wages, health and welfare benefits, pensions and retirements, shift differentials, hazardous duty pay, training and upgrading. The threat to our union and our members is relatively simple. If we lose our political power, we lose our right to bargain. If we lose our right to bargain we lose the benefits we have gained in the past and potential benefits in the future. We are not just in this fight for AFSCME. Not just for public employees. But for all the workers across this nation who are losing ground. For all the workers who are struggling to hold on. For all those workers who have been beat down for so long they have forgotten how to stand up. We want them to stand up, join us and fight back against those who would try and take us back to yesteryear. We cannot be satisfied merely to hold our ground. Instead, we must take back ground from our enemies. We must take it back, school board by school board, town by town, county by county, state by state. We must fight everything and everyone who would try to take away our opportunity for a better life. You have been reminded this week that the governors in Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri signed away state employees' right to bargain. That's despicable in and of itself. But just as disturbing as what they did was the way they did it. They signed away our rights as casually as if they were autographing pictures for their supporters. We have to ask ourselves: How could they get away with this? How could it happen? How could it be that rights we struggled for so long to win were so easily lost? The governors were aided and abetted not just by George Bush, Grover Norquist, and all the others who support their right-wing ideology. They also were aided and abetted by the anti-worker climate and the indifference of the rich and powerful. Those who outsource private sector jobs... eliminate public sector jobs... and exploit immigrants and poor people who are scrambling for any kind of job. Look at the economic realities of our time. We've lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001. Forty-six million Americans are without health coverage. And the income gap between the rich and the poor is wider than it's ever been. The rich pay no taxes while the middle class workers and the poor underwrite and subsidize their lifestyle. Poor people who work every day, supporting rich people who never worked a day in their lives. I get letters from time to time suggesting that the union and I spend too much time worrying about poor people. Brothers and Sisters, we have a moral obligation to be concerned about the poor and the powerless. In many cases, if not for a stroke of luck or an answered prayer, we might be among them. And many of us who work every day are just two paychecks away from poverty. In fact, the average CEO earns more in one day than most workers earn in one year. In the same year, 400 people became billionaires. That's "billion" with a B. Thirty-seven million Americans - in our nation of 300 million - are living in poverty. That's enough people to populate Canada. And more than 1 million of the poor live in this state - the Land of Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator." If we left this hall and walked through Chicago's neighborhoods, we would find that 1 of every 20 residents is living in poverty. And among the poor people we would encounter, 1 out of 3 of them would be children. Yet, President Bush tells us that his economic strategies are fueling economic growth. In fact, he bragged just a couple of weeks ago that his policies are trimming the deficit. He neglected to say that he created the deficit with his tax cuts for the super-wealthy and his war in Iraq. Gasoline $3.25 a gallon, college tuition going up, quality of life going down, violence on the increase, opportunity on the decrease. You might think all of this would spur action at the highest levels of government. You might think our elected officials would declare another "war on poverty," or a program for prosperity. In the midst of all this, what does Congress do? Debate issues like flag-burning. As more and more workers disappear from the middle class, and the gap widens between them and the truly well off, our Congress is not debating economic policy that would close the gap, or job-creation policies that would expand opportunity. They spend valuable time debating same-sex marriage, about which the overwhelming majority of Americans could care less, or flag burning, which nobody supports anyhow. We as a union are a major factor in shaping the debate for the creation of a strong America, an America that provides an opportunity for all of its people to build a better life. Bold steps to keep our union in a key position to continue fighting for our members, fighting for quality public services and fighting for a fair and just society. With your action, we will organize new members by the thousands to join us in this fight to build a stronger union. We will use our numbers and our power to reshape the debate around the policies to improve the lives of our members and the society we serve. Every child in this nation, rich or poor, should have access to a quality education in order to participate effectively in the world they will inherit. Every worker - public, private or in between - should have the right to unrestricted collective bargaining so their current needs are met and their future needs are secure. Our elderly in the sunset of their time should be able to live out the remainder of their days in respect and dignity. Our veterans, to whom we owe our freedoms, must be honored for their sacrifice. And their needs - and the promises made to them -- must be fulfilled by a grateful nation. We as a union must be a part of the debate that argues that "peace and prosperity" be the cornerstone of our foreign policy, rather than "greed and arrogance." By your action, you have in this convention set our union on this course. You have decided that we should not be just a good union, but we should be the best union. You have decided that acceptance of the future is not good enough for the members of AFSCME. AFSCME must be a part of shaping the future. When we leave this city, when we leave this convention, what we have done here must be shared with every member, discussed in every workplace, understood at every local, supported at every level. Those of us gathered here have changed the course of history for our union and our nation. Yet I believe that our greatest challenge goes beyond protecting the rights we have won. Our greatest challenge goes beyond even growing our union and making gains in the political arena. Sisters and Brothers, we have a mission that no one else can fulfill. We must be the key protectors of our democracy. That's what the trade union movement is all about: Democracy. Ensuring that voices of dissent are heard. Ensuring that the powerless have some recourse against the powerful. You've heard during this convention that public employees are facing a barrage unlike any other in history. But beyond that, workers in general are Public Enemy Number 1 here in the United States and around the world. They have forgotten that they don't hold their positions of public trust and authority to reward themselves, but to represent us. They have forgotten that we elected them to uphold democracy. Instead, they seem intent on moving us backwards, to a time when a select few enjoyed all the rights and privileges, while the many labored outside their gates. When the stakes are as high as they are right now, we don't go to the bargaining table just to win an additional nickel more an hour, or to gain an additional 15 minutes of break time. An organization of more than one million people has much more to do than that. We go to the bargaining table to demand respect and to stand up for all working people. We have an obligation as members of this powerful union to be the voice for those workers who don't have a voice. Sometimes, I worry that even we have forgotten how powerful we are. You heard President McEntee speak yesterday about how we are taken for granted, despite the importance of the work we do, and despite the fact that we are good, solid citizens. Too often, we buy into the negative rhetoric and stereotypes about public employees. Some of us may even be ashamed to say what we do for a living. We don't see the honor in our own work. But without us, everything that makes communities exist would stop. They'd have to hang a sign on our cities and towns: "Closed." Our 21st Century Initiative is about building a stronger union at every level to meet each and every challenge we face. Not just for the members of our union, or even for the universe of public employees. But for all working people. For the protection of democracy. We must be the ones to build a new economic order - to keep sounding the warning bells about the divide between the rich and the poor that threatens our democracy. Because we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers. When you think about it, there is no better place for us to commit ourselves to the 21st Century Initiative and to safeguarding democracy for working people than in Chicago. It was here that workers protested to win an eight-hour workday, a movement that led to the Haymarket Affair, one of the most notable and tragic in labor history. It was here that Dr. King led a rally to end discrimination in housing, schools and employment that brought attention to the depths of inequality in northern cities. It was here that dissenters at the Democratic National Convention protested the Vietnam War. So in Chicago, it is fitting for us to stand up for ourselves, to speak out and to raise our voices in unison. To say as loudly as we can that we are proud to be members of the AFSCME family. Proud of what we do. Proud of what we stand for! Together, we are the warriors who will force our nation to stay true to its values and its ideals. We are the warriors who will stand up for democracy - who will remind our leaders that this is a democracy. Join me on the front lines. Join me as we march toward victory. Join me as we take the 21st century from the powerful, and put it in the hands of the people! |
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