Jewish Labor Committee

2013 Jewish Labor Committee Human Rights Awards Dinner
New York, April 3, 2013-04-03
Remarks by Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

Thank you. I'm honored and humbled to stand with all of you today as we recognize the dedication, effort and accomplishments of some truly remarkable people who have defended the rights and improved the prospects of working people in the United States and around the world.
And let me say a special thank you to Stuart [Appelbaum] for all you do.
I am also pleased to be here as we celebrate the deep and vibrant ties between the labor movement and the Jewish community, and to reaffirm our shared vision, our collective responsibility, and our common struggle to make the world a better place.
The importance of the Jewish community to the American labor movement was no accident of history, but a product of the shared experiences and common activism of working men and women who immigrated to the United States a century and more ago.
We came from various corners of the globe, fleeing poverty and persecution, but we sought the same thing--a chance to work hard and to build a better life. It wasn't easy. But with solidarity, we found strength to win a measure of social justice, a value that is deep-seated in the Jewish community. That value helped give shape to America's labor movement, and it continues to play an integral role in our movement today.
I'm talking both about the broad Jewish tradition of honoring work, and the specific contributions of thousands of individual Jews over the decades who have sought to give expression to their personal commitment to justice and fairness by joining the labor movement.
And that's why, on behalf of the working men and women of the AFL-CIO, I'd like to express my profound gratitude to you, for who you are and what you do. Thank you.
As working people in America, we have been living through some tough and trying times. I'm talking about record inequality, and the diminished power and fractured lives of working men and women.
And on top of it all, in Washington, we seem to go from one crisis to another -- from the Fiscal Cliff to Sequester to -- who knows? But this political show has real victims, real casualties, real jobs lost, and real workers furloughed, real children cut off Head Start rolls, real programs cut short and curtailed.
Why are working people in such a fix? There are as many reasons as there are stars in the sky. Ruthless Wall Street CEOs and bad actors in business, the broken NRLB, feckless political friends and iron-clad political opponents, but in the end, those reasons aren't good enough.
And let me just say, on behalf of the largest organization of working people in America, we have not done enough to stop it. Our unions have not done enough to change, to adapt and to reach out to new workers.
You see, if we wait for Wall Street to stop being greedy, we'll be waiting for a long, long time.
I don't know about you, but I don't want working families in America to wait that long.
And that's why the AFL-CIO has embarked on an ambitious plan to take a hard look at ourselves, to solicit the best ideas, to open up and, if needed, to dramatically re-shape our unions, and open up our membership to every single working man or woman who wants to join with us.
Now, when you talk about change, some people get antsy, because it can sound a lot like criticism. Some people think accepting criticism is a mark of vulnerability, but I'm not so concerned about appearing vulnerable.
Working people and labor unions have been vulnerable for years. And no amount of bluster or head-in-the-sand insistence that everything is fine will change that reality.
So, yes, working people in America and our unions are vulnerable, but from vulnerability can come strength.
Brothers and sisters, when we look back on the early days of our modern unions, in the years and decades before 1940, it can be easy to forget that the future growth of our unions and of America's middle class was not a foregone conclusion. Not at all.
Working people tried a lot of different ideas until some stuck, until some worked.
The growth of unions in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s happened because of a convergence of a moment of possibility and of hard work, creative and relentless work.
You see, our job today is to do the same thing, to try new ideas, to risk failure and to keep working until we match up with a moment of possibility -- and I believe that moment is upon us. I want to add, too, that our job right now is not so much to figure out all the answers, but to develop a conversation and a process that can generate ideas, experiment with those ideas, and then take the ideas that work and scale them up.
America's labor movement needs your ideas, your thoughts and your input. There are a lot of ways that you can get involved, but one is for you to join an open conversation on the website of the AFL-CIO that will start next month, and we'll be holding listening sessions and discussions. The subject is the future of working people, and we hope you'll take part because our nation needs your experience and your insight.
That's the difference between top-down and bottom-up problem solving. We don't need to come up with all the answers ourselves, but we do have to ask questions together, be open, and be able to spot answers that might work.
That's what the United Mine Workers did under John L. Lewis, with the organizing committees that built the great unions of the CIO: the Steelworkers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Communications Workers, and so many others.
We need to do the same thing today. And, to do so, we need courage and a belief that the impossible can be possible. We need a serious and appraising eye, and the absolutely certain belief that every worker -- every single worker -- deserves a voice on the job, and a chance to improve his or her life through collective action. America needs that now, today.
My friends, ours is an important job, a sacred responsibility.
It's time for us to stop wishing the world were different. It's time to make it different. What we want is not too much to ask. A good chance for a decent life. An opportunity to have a voice and do our best work. Fair wages. Health care. A secure retirement. Education, and a better life for our kids and grandkids.
That's not too much to ask for the working people who wake America up every morning and tuck her into bed at night, who answer the call and do what it takes. That's not too much to ask.
That vision is what unites us here tonight. Now let us be united not only in our values and our vision -- but in action.
Thank you.