AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler could have said, “we told you so” in her third annual State of the Unions address.
She didn’t.
Instead, she warned that working people were “under attack” at a “moment unlike any, in the history of our labor movement and our country.”
The attacker is the Trump administration, though Shuler said, “Republicans aren’t going to save us. Democrats aren’t going to save us. Working people are going to save ourselves.”
She issued an invitation: “So if you believe in common-sense, no matter what political party you belong to, if you’re ready to stand up to the CEOs and the billionaires, if you’re ready to fight for your sister, your brother beside you, if you’re ready to build the kind of country that workers deserve, come join us.”
The AFL-CIO, which includes 63 unions with almost 15 million members, endorsed President Joe Biden for a second term and switched its endorsement to Vice President Kamala Harris when he stepped aside for her. “From day one, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history,” Shuler said in announcing the nod to Harris.
The nation’s largest labor organization repeatedly warned against putting Trump back in the White House.
“The idea that Donald Trump has ever, or will ever, care about working people is demonstrably false,” Shuler said in a press release. “For his entire time as president, he actively sought to roll back worker protections, wages, and the right to join a union at every level.”
On X, Shuler said, “Trump’s union talk is pure BS. He’s always been anti-worker, pushing union-busting Right to Work and gutting wages and safety protections. He wasn’t on our side as president, and he sure isn’t now.”
In her State of the Unions address, Shuler said “We’ve seen greedy CEOs and billionaires before, haven’t we? What we’ve never seen is those same CEOs and billionaires being handed full control of our government; our democracy; our lives. … This is a government of, by, and for the CEOs and the billionaires.”
Shuler conceded that the struggles of working Americans, “the precarity people are living with, when it comes to their rent, their health care, their fears about A.I. and the future … didn’t start with Donald Trump.
“It started with a system that has left people behind for a long time now. That has put CEOs over construction workers, Billionaires over baristas. That has gutted labor rights over the past 40 years — and not a coincidence, saw income inequality rise to its highest level ever.
“FDR once reminded us: Democracies have gone away in other great nations. Not because people hated democracy. But because people gave up liberty in the hopes of getting something to eat.”
Shuler warned, “If we push people to the edge — to the point where they can’t afford groceries, or health insurance, or a place to call home — we can’t be surprised when they turn against the system they’re living in.
“This is the choice working Americans have been given: Chaos or the same broken status quo.
“An authoritarian who tells us only he can make things great again, or convincing ourselves everything is already great — while Black women make 64 cents on the dollar, young people struggle to pay rent, and a CEO that makes 7,000 TIMES what his workers make. That has led us to this moment.
“We wanted cheaper groceries and we got tanks in our streets. We wanted affordable health care. We got 16 million Americans who are about to be kicked off their coverage. We wanted jobs you could raise a family on. But that’s not what we got. We got more American workers laid off last month than any month since the start of the pandemic.
“The American people said loud and clear: Unions are the one thing we agree on. Instead this Administration attacked us — and the workers who keep this country going.”
She called on workaday Americans to “build real, sustained power that shows up every day — not just once every four years.”
Shuler argued that “Politics alone won’t fix what’s wrong with this country. Not when there are members of Congress on both sides of the aisle more worried about their re-election than they are helping working families. Who would happily let you get automated out of a job, if it meant they got another campaign check from the CEO doing it.”
She said the AFL-CIO’s annual poll of workers revealed that “people have lost faith in every institution in this country. Our Political Parties. Our Supreme Court. Our Religious Institutions. Corporations. Our Media. Every single one of them is underwater right now, in terms of trust. Yet nearly two-thirds of this country believes in unions.
“And when you ask the most vulnerable workers in this country — workers who say: “I’m living on the edge, I don’t have time for politics, because I’m too busy trying to get by, I just want someone, somewhere to help me build a better life” — those workers still have faith in one single thing.
“75% of those workers say they believe in unions. They believe that joining a union is their best shot — to build a better life, a more secure life, a brighter future for themselves and their families.
“They believe because they have seen us deliver, again and again.”
She said Monday isn’t just “just Labor Day. It’s the start of Labor Week. Marches and rallies and trainings, hundreds of thousands of working people coming together, from this coming weekend to next. Kicking off the single biggest year of action, from now until next Labor Day, in the history of this movement.
“Every single thing working people have won for ourselves in this country’s history — it’s not because we asked those in power. It’s not because they were handed to us. It’s because we fought for them relentlessly — by organizing, and mobilizing, and using our collective power….That same spirit is alive today, now more than ever.”
Shuler acknowledged that “there will always, always be those who try to divide us, who tell us we’re up against too much money, too much power. They may be right if we go it alone. But when we come together, incredible things happen.”
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