Her guest is richard trumka. The nations of Largest Labor union. This has a labor day for us. Welcome. Abor unions. This is his 11th appearance at the breakfast so you have become a liberty tradition for us. Welcome. First a bit of background, president trumka was born in pennsylvania where he followed his father and grandfather into the coal mines and worked his way through college and law school. He graduated from penn state then received his jd from villanova. Upon graduation he joined the legal staff of the United Mine Workers of america and eventually became president at the age of 33. Since 1989, he has been working on the aflcio executive council and was elected president of the federation and 2009. Now for the ground rules. We are on the record here. Please, no live blogging or tweeting. No filing of any kind while the breakfast is underway. Once the session ends, the embargo is lifted and you can file away. We will end at 10 00. We will email pictures of the breakfast to all of the reporters here as soon as the breakfast ends. As you know, if youd like to ask a question, please send me a signal and i will call you as time permits. Rumka if you like to , make a brief opening remarks, the floor is yours. I cant believe it has been 11 years. Good morning and happy early labor day to everyone who is here. As always, i want to thank you and Christian Science monitor for hosting us. I want to thank each one of you for being here today. I have been in the Labor Movement for more than 50 years. Actually, 52 years. I have never in my lifetime witnessed a moment like this and i have never felt this much energy and determination from working people. I have never seen this movement so driven to take our own future in our own hands. Working people are rising to meet a moment in history because we know something is deeply wrong. Our nation is being poisoned by hateful rhetoric and divisive tactics at the highest levels of government. People of color are being scapegoated, minimized, dehumanized, and told to go back where they came from. Racist dog whistles have been replaced with megaphones. Women are openly degraded and discriminated against. Americas welcome mat along the beacon of hope for immigrants, refugees, and asylumseekers including my own parents is being bulldozed and paved over replaced with the clear message that you are not welcome here. Meanwhile, the rich continue to hoard unprecedented money and power. While people who build the wealth are working harder and longer for less with less dignity in harsher and more dangerous workplaces. In the last 30 years, the top 1 has increased in wealth by 21 trillion. In that same time, the wealth of the bottom percent has decreased by 900 billion. Ofare faced with the reality historic inequality and rising bigotry that goes all the way to the top. The Labor Movement, our Labor Movement is offering a path forward that is lit by solidarity. In 2017, more than a quarter of a Million People joined unions. Three quarters of those were below the age of 35. In 2018, nearly 1000 of our members were elected to Public Office, ushering in a series of legislativeelated victories in 2019. Now, as the Labor Movement sets to higher than ever in the 2020 president ial election, half of said today they would join a union if they were given a chance. That is more than 60 Million People who want the power and security of a union card. American workers are not interested in slivers of change. We are not interested in gestures or tokens. We need action on a scale that will reverse a generation of corporate government that has rigged our economy to enrich a few powerful interests at the expense of everyone else. Trade is a great place to start. President trumps Biggest Campaign promise was a new nafta. It is a big reason why he won in michigan, wisconsin, and my home state of pennsylvania. Yet the proposed replacement still falls short of what we need. We are not looking for tinkering. Nafta. Rebranded we need to replace it with a proworker deal that uses the enormous interest and economic power to uphold the rights and dignity of working people here and across north america. There is a number of Critical Issues we have raised and continue to raise, but chief among them is this. The new nafta is simply not enforceable. In particular, mexico has yet to demonstrate that it has the resources and infrastructure to follow through on its promised reforms, and trade without enforcement is a windfall for corporations and a disaster for workers, but if mexico cannot ensure workers ability to bargain higher wages through unions, the entire deal is a nonstarter. That is why i am announcing today that i will be leading a on wednesday u. S. To meet personally with president lopez obrador. He has been a friend of the Labor Movement and i believe he is acting in good faith. I want to share those concerns directly. We need him to show us how mexico will guarantee workers rights to raise wages through democratic unions. , workingoesnt happen people across north america will continue to suffer. At this point i think it has been clear that without the support of the Labor Movement in the United States, mexico, and canada, the new nafta will meet the same fate as tpp. It is clear that while we cannot fix the rules if we only fix nafta. In 2019, 2020, and beyond, we have been gauging fullcourt press for a wide range of economic since the National Labor relations act. Working people are fighting every day. We are fighting with every ounce of energy we have to reclaim what is rightfully that of the working people. This labor day, we are simply not going to settle for anything less than what workers deserve. Having said that, i will be happy to open up questions. The issues that are important to at the big Labor Convention in iowa last week you told the crowd a candidate must be unambiguously proworker and prounion to win the endorsement. How do you rank the top five democrats . Have Bernie Sanders making a huge push for labor. Buttigieg. Excited that all the candidates are talking about workers rights and unions. Also have urged everyone of those candidates to meet with as many members as we can in as many different forums as we can so they can make their case to the American Worker. Any endorsement of a candidate upl come through the bottom from our members to our executive council. Our executive council has to in orderrge boat, 70 to endorse anybody. That means you have to have a grand swell of support. See what happens with the candidates and our members. Seen those have candidates talk more about the issues that are important to working people then we have seen in the past. People always say, what do you want in a candidate . We want a candidate who wants what workers need. Wants whatdidate workers need, we have a chance of getting it. If they only say the union word when they are in the union candidatese five have supported and have a history of supporting unions over the years, and we will see what case they make on how they intend to change the rules of the economy so they make america work for workers. Who you think is the best person to beat President Trump or is that the labor message. . Hat is your top priority it is a workers message and it is a combination of those. If they make the case for changing the rules, they will be able to have success in an election. It is not either or. It is a combination of both, and the more they talk about changing the rules, and it is not just trade. It is tax law , health and safety, health care, pension, Bankruptcy Law that have stripped workers of their pensions over the years. What case they make on all of that, and then our members will say that is the one we want and that is where we will go. John from newsmax, right to your right. Going back to when the aflcio was formed and a republican secretary of labor, there has always been tension between the president of the aflcio and republican secretaries of labor. Two nights ago, President Trump nominated Eugene Scalia to be secretary of labor. Will the aflcio oppose the nomination actively and if so, why . Scalia wasene in 2002, we actively opposed him. He had a record of being antiunion. Since 2002, his record has only gotten worse. He called repetitive injury one time junk science. He made a career of trying to bust unions and do things like that, and as a result, i would say that it is most likely, though not that it is most likely we will continue to him, we opposed him in 2002 and his record has only gotten worse. His views are dangerously outside the mainstream and leave us no choice but to oppose him. The buffalo news to your left. I wanted to talk to you about labor issues in buffalo of all places. What i would call the starbucks of buffalo, workers voted to unionize. This struck us as somewhat unusual for a small coffee shop, for people to unionize. I was wondering if you are aware of this situation and see it as oppressive for workers to organize even in the smallest of companies . It doesnt surprise me at all because it is happening everywhere. People in small, mediumsized, and large unions need the voice of a union. We are seeing for instance in the airline industry, jetblue organize, spirit airline, Customer Service agent, united catering, fragile it workers at graduate workers at brown, at columbia, at georgetown, at harvard. Journalists at the l. A. Times, chicago trib, the onion, and vossmagazine, media, they all voted to organize. People all over the country are organizing and heres why. Workers do not believe that either the political system for the Economic System is working for them, so they have turned to each other and understand the only way they are going to get anything is by joining together and using their collective power. Whether you are in a coffee mine, acoal classroom at college or kindergarten, the only way to get something is to come together and bargain collectively. It surprises me not the least. We have starbucks and other places that are organized. We have different types of things, doctors that are organized, nurses are organized. They organize for multiple different reasons. Nurses organize in a number of places to protect patients. Staffing was getting so thin they could not do their job. No one would listen to them, so they organized unions to bargain for fair staffing and fair training. That is sort of why i am so excited about this labor day and where we are, because that type of momentum and that type of belief in workers believing in each other is really catching fire all over the country. This particular situation, the three employees trying to organize the union were fired. I think that kind of got the other employees joining. I was wondering, is it more difficult in a smaller environment for workers to come together . Unfortunately what you just said, is not atypical. It is typical in organizing drive. Let me tell you about our antiquated labor laws that were done in 1947. The first one was 1935 and then 1947, and an amendment in 1959. All of which were to take workers rights away. A group of workers want to organize because they want to bargain collectively with their employer. The employer immediately calls what are called union buster firms who specialize in doing nothing but preventing workers from getting a union. They do these captive audience meetings where they will bring you together. You must come, it is mandatory, and they spend two to three hours talking about how bad unions are. Many of them, you are not allowed to speak. One case someone tried to speak, tried to leave, and ended up firing them and the board withheld the firing. They threatened to take away your job. You. Ultimately fire when you get fired under todays laws, and it may take you three or four years to get your job back. That means you will have to work somewhere. All of the money that you make gets deducted from what the employer who illegally fired you has to make. It is cheap. The head is on the wall. It says if you dare try to exercise your right to have a union, i will fire you. You get through all of that and you still vote, sometimes they wont recognize the union. They appeal it for four or five years so you fight in the courts. Then when you get recognized, they sit down and say we will negotiate with you. We call it surface bargaining. They mouth empty words with no attempt to reach an agreement. In 50 of the cases, after going through all of that, you end up not being able to get an agreement. That is typical, typical that workers want a voice on the job and typical that the response of an employer is to fire, threaten, and violate the law because there is no effect, no cost for them violating the law. It costs them virtually nothing. They get to deduct penalties they have to pay. We are trying to get the pro act passed. That would be a rewrite of the law that would put real teeth into those, make an employer who fires someone illegally pay triple damages, three times what they do, just like you do in antitrust. It would do a number of other things as well. It would make it so in first contracts if you come to an impasse, it arbitrates that contract so you get an agreement and you can get going again. That is why the pro action it has over 200 sponsors in the house, 41 sponsors in the senate, and we will keep pushing for it. Hopefully we will get it done and when we do, the president will get a chance to sign it and demonstrate his real love for workers. Julie pace from the ap to your right. I am wondering if you think President Trumps strength in 2016 in pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin has had an impact in the way that Democratic Candidates are talking about trade, unions, and workers in this election . Would you mind if i went back and sort of answered that with a little bit more of an expansive answer to give you the framework . I can give you a three word answer but would not really answered the way it is. Harvard did a study on millennials and asked them how important it is to live in a democracy. 30 of millennials said it is important to live in a democracy. 70 said it is not an of those, 24 said it is bad to live in a democracy. That is the first generation in this country that has lived their entire lives under the rules of globalization. All they have ever seen our wages going down, their Parent Health care taken away, pensions taken away. They probably seen their parents or someone they know lose a home or a household, but then they are told, dont worry, go to school and everything will be hunkydory. They go to school, come out with a mountain of debt and cannot find a job. They are starting to believe that capitalism is equals low wages, insecurity, and poverty. Those same workers over three decades have seen stagnant wages and have been attacked in pennsylvania and michigan and wisconsin and West Virginia and a number of state. They dont believe the political system works for them and they dont believe the Economic System works for them. Along comes donald trump the last time and says, im going to change your rules. Change the rules so they work for you. People said, i want somebody to change the rules. I am going to give him a chance, so they voted for him. I think the lesson getting to your question the lesson the democrats, and these candidates have come to understand is unless you talk about the Economic Issues that affect working people, you are not going to get elected. They have begun talking about the Kitchen Table economics that affect workers. The more they do that, the more workers will connect with them and the more support they will get. Hillary clinton she talked about Hillary Clintons talkedn would argue she about Kitchen Table issues and working people. Is there Something Different than desh in the way democrats are talking about it now . It is the centerpiece of their campaign. They are trying to change the country to make it better for workers. The economic talks were secondary. Now, Kitchen Table economics are first and foremost and workers are starting to listen. They are having those conversations on the ground in iowa, philadelphia suburbs, pittsburgh, columbus, ohio, all over the country they are having those conversations with workers and workers are listening. They want somebody who is going to change the rules of the economy to make the country work for workers. We will start to reverse the trend and see more kids say, living in a democracy is important. The fact that there is a potential implosion was just reflected a few days ago by the ceos of the business roundtable. 181 of them came together and signed a new agenda about what is the purpose of a corporation . The purpose of a corporation was to maximize shareholder value, and that helped create the inequality that we see, growing inequality. Now they are saying rightfully so, that corporation has an obligation toward workers, the state where they live in and we will see if they translate that into real action. It may be a pr pitch because of the amount of respect and i guess credibility that the corporate ceos have in this country has diminished dramatically. This could be an election where both candidates are not beholden to them, and who have talked harshly to them. We will see. Amanda becker from reuters. On the 2020 race, as you said, you have a field of candidates talking about issues that are important to the Labor Movement more than we have in years. Do you see any early differentiators between the candidates, what those issues might be . Is one of them medicare for all . That is one thing that has emerged dividing the field and some of the candidates not supporting at say the reason is labor. I was wondering your thoughts on that issue and how important that will be, and if there are any other issues emerging at this