Welcome, rich trumka. First, a programming note. Trumka. First, a programming note. You should know that we are being recorded and that cspan is also recording for a leader broadcast. You know, just so you know. A bit of background. President trumka hails from southwest pennsylvania and comes from a proud family of coal miners working his way through college and then through law school. He started his union work with the United Mine Workers and became the unions president at the age of 33. Since 1980 done, he has been working on the aflcios executive council and was like a president in 2009 and was like a president in 2009. We are on the record. Please know live blogging or tweeting. No filing of any kind mother breakfast is underway. While the breakfast is underway. The embargo is lifted when the session ends. Here are the important instructions for how to do this on zoom. We are hoping to make this as much like in person event as possible. Collegial, conversational and informative. We ask all of the reporters keep their video on an audio muted unless you are speaking. To ask a question, please use the raised hand function on zoom to help us set up a queue. Ofck on the participants 10 on the bottom of your screen and click raised hand on the window. When i call on you to ask a question, unmute yourself and introduce yourself by name and news outlet if you have not already done so. If i have not already done so. Followup questions are fine, but please bear in mind we have a bunch of people on this call and i want everyone to have a turn to ask a question if they want to. Youou have a question for feel you have not been able to ask a question, please direct a message to our breakfast assistant, noah robertson, and please make sure you are messaging him alone and not the entire call. Now, president trumka. If you would like to make brief opening remarks, the floor is yours. Thank you for that introduction. Thank you all for being here. I hope that wherever you are logging in from, you are healthy and you are safe. I look forward to this discussion every year as a kickoff to labor day. In many ways, it is a Progress Report on the American Labor movement. And a tribute to the readership and resilience of our movement that even when the state of our union is in such disarray, the state of americas unions is strong. Union members have answered the call of covid19 every day and in every way. We have served. We have sacrificed. We have healed. We have done at all. We have honored the country we love, the country that unions built. That is why new research from gallup released this very morning puts our Approval Rating at 65 . That is the highest since 2003. One of our best marks in more than half of a century. That,oblem and more than the clear and present danger, is that too many of our countrys leaders have not served us well. They have not protected us. There leading our country crumble and our people suffer. Donald trump and Mitch Mcconnell are at the top of that list. Remember what nancy pelosi and House Democrats did to make america whole. They passed the heroes act on may 15. That is 16 weeks ago tomorrow. More than 100 days. It would protect our paychecks and our pensions and our public services. It would save lives. Mitch mcconnell and his antiworker coalition antiworker colleagues in the senate have refused to act. American workers are sitting awake at night worrying, suffering and mourning. At thels are mounting up Kitchen Table because that bill sits on Mitch Mcconnells desk. Across america, some governors and mayors have tried to pick up the slack and they deserve credit. But they cannot do it alone. An unprecedented National Crisis requires a plan from the top. It requires vision and competence and management skills. It requires humility, agility and perseverance. And yes, compassion. Compassion for everyone who calls this country home. Crisis we the confront today challenges america. Our lives depend on the competence and compassion of donald trump. He is simply the worst president to have at the worst time. The worst part of this devastating moment is that it did not have to be this way. Members enough union defected from the Democratic Party to tip the balance in places like michigan and my home state of pennsylvania. When trump was elected, i committed to working with the president on issues where we can agree. I owed that to every working person out there whether they voted for trump or clinton or did not voted on. Because if working people are strong, america Strong America is strong. At the time, trade and infrastructure manufacturing stood out as areas for Common Ground. But donald trump failed. He failed to seek Common Ground with us. He failed to consult common sense or demonstrate common decency. He broke his promises on infrastructure and manufacturing. The jobs he said were coming never came. Instead every building america, he is tearing it apart. His tax cut for the ultrarich accelerated the outsourcing of good paying american jobs and worsening inequality. On trade, working people made some progress. But lets get the facts right. Nancy pelosi stood with us in blocking the United States mexican canadian agreement until we finally made it enforceable. I will never forget, working people rewrote nafta. The president just wrote our rode our just coattails. Relentless, reprehensible attacks. There are too many examples to name. Let me point out just a few. Donald trumps appointments from the Supreme Court to the National LaborRelations Board to the department of labor have made it their mission to undermine collective bargaining. Every role, every decision, every move has made it harder to live and work in america. Not since Ronald Reagan fired the air Traffic Controllers have we seen this level of unionbusting from the white house. Donald trumps disregard for Workplace Health and safety has been dangerous, delinquent and deadly. He has never had a fulltime director of the Occupational Safety and health administration. There were a few inspectors today that any point since it was founded. Weakened enforcement of the mine safety and health administration, forcing minors to work in hazardous conditions. R and asmer mine this in grandson of as the son and grandson of miners, that offends me personally. Donald trump inherited a pandemic playbook from his predecessor and he literally tossed it in the trash. He abandoned a workplace Infectious Disease standard they could have protected our frontline heroes from covid19. Even after the virus hit, he refused to issue a National Workplace standard, leaving millions vulnerable to infection and in too many cases, death. This we learn from all of what did we learn from all of this . That working people cannot afford donald trump. We learned that workers might not be able to survive another four years with him. Meanwhile, what has he learned . Precious little. After months of pandemic politics and generations of systemic racism, he is pouring gasoline on the fire. It is a transparent, ugly lastditch effort to scare some people into voting for him and scare others away from voting at all. Our country is sick and donald trump is making it worse. Our economy is weakening and donald trump is making it worse. America is hurting and donald trump is making it worse. America needs healing. It gives us division. America needs hope. Here is the plain truth. For the good of the country we love, working people gave donald trump every last chance to prove himself. It is clearer than ever for working people that to defeat coronavirus, economic inequality and systemic racism, we are move thishave to re president from the white house. Can i jump in . Im just about done. Working people are ready to push america forward. We are ready to organize and form new unions. We are ready to mobilize and pass the heroes act so that workers can join unions freely and we are ready to elect joe biden and Kamala Harris and Union Members and allies from coasttocoast. I will stop there. I wanted to give you a great quote from Lyndon Johnson but i will not. Label we can work that in able bit later. I want to get into questions. I will ask a few and then we will go to others. Mentioned,l, as you bluecollar workers in pennsylvania are extremely important to Donald Trumps reelection. Many of them voted for mr. Trump in 2016. Some of them for cultural reasons whether it is guns or abortion or other issues that are not directly about labor or work issues but are very important to them personally. How can joe biden, a native of pennsylvania how can joe biden and the democrats win these people back and went back these and win back these northern formally blue states that are so critical to the democrats . First of all, i think joe biden knows something donald trump never has and probably never will. If you want to restore the economy, you have to defeat the pandemic and to defeat the pandemic, you have to keep workers safe. First thing he would do is keep workers safe. He would bring back inspectors, enforcement to osha so workers who went back to work way be able to do so safely without it being without being injured, infected or even die. He has a plan to bring back america. The infrastructure that donald trump promised to do but has never done including retrofitting 4 million buildings that would create 4 million jobs for workers. He understands the importance of manufacturing and would do a tax code that would encourage people to manufacture here unlike Donald Trumps tax bill that has rewarded and encouraged people for outsourcing jobs. Joe understands working people and he understands that a job is more than just a paycheck. It is about dignity and it is about respect and it is about safety. He would honor all of those. He knows working people. Just let me supplement that. Do you remember when donald trump ran . High andages were too he has done everything he can to lower wages. The first thing he did the department of labor was on the misclassification issue change that law and abandon the work being done there. He change the law on overtime at 3 Million People lost over time. His National Board is staffed with unionbusting corporate lawyers in every decision is designed to weaken the voice of workers. Result, workers understand that the promises he made is the exact opposite of what he did. I also want to ask you about teachers unions. They are absolutely essential to get kids back in school in person to the economy can get going again but the teachers unions havent quite a force keeping them out of the classroom. What is the solution to this . Should they be working harder to get teachers back in the classrooms so their parents can really go back to work . Every teacher out there wants to get back into a classroom. Teachers are fiercely protective of their students and the community where they do business. Districts many school dont have the resources to be able to put kids back in the classroom safely so that it protects the students and the professional staff. Act, if passed, would provide aid to those schools and help us get kids back more quickly. Allowrs are not going to their students for their professional staff to go back unless it is safe and yet we have a president who is in a rush to get people back but he wont do anything to help them. Aid to state and local government to get those schools open and get the backtoschool. I respect those teachers for standing up and protecting their students and the communities where we do business. Thank you. Gizzi, i want you to unmute yourself. He would like to ask you a question after he unmute himself go ahead. Am i coming in . Good. Happy labor day early. Two questions, if i might. First, talk some hardnosed politics. You mentioned labor states such as pennsylvania, michigan were keyed to the president selection. How do you see both of those states and wisconsin, three labor strong states doing now . I think joe biden is doing well in all three. We look at the promises donald trump made. Let me go back and just do a frame for your question. Workers back in 2016 did not think that either the economy or political system was working for them. They were looking for someone who would change the rules to make the system work. Donald trump said im going to change the rules. Change the rules on trade, on manufacturing. Change the rules so that you can get ahead. After four years, he has changed rules, but not to the benefit of working people. Working people are smart. They understand what is happening. They know he is the most antiunion president we have seen in decades. We have fewer manufacturing jobs than when he took office. We know we have fewer mining jobs than when he took office. We know that the promises he made on infrastructure never came about. Budget that had negative spending on infrastructure, not positive. And when those get to our members they understand he wasnt what he said he was. He has not lived up to his hype. As of today, would you say he is ahead . Biden . Yes, i would. The other question i had is this. A number of your predecessors were also strong voices for freedom worldwide. George was a strong anticommunist, kirkland supported the anticommunists in nicaragua. Do you have any thoughts on what is going on in belarus right now . The persecution of a lot of traders and workers. I do. Ok. Yes . I that your eye doctor gotcha question for this year . Not at all. Every year, you asked me a question and no matter how i answer, you have a sensational headline. We still oppose communist like we always did. We think what is going on is not fair and we are working with our brothers and sisters around the world to bring freedom and Free Democratic union to every country. So you think the leader should go . Im not going to get into that today. This is about labor day in the med states. United states. Next, we have liam from bloomberg law. Thanks for having the call. Trump president trumka, earlier this summer you rejected the idea of disaffiliated with Police Unions , saying that you wanted to engage members rather than isolate them. Time, are must sent you a letter, calling your reprehensiblelice and said that they will not come and i quote, sit down with those who march in the streets calling for our death or those who have already indebted 50,000 horrible 50,000 men women based on one incident. You made ins have engaging and talking to your members in police and at what point do you give up those efforts and say that a consensus cannot be reached . We would not have disaffiliated us from us, they would have disaffiliated from the alc cio. To try toe told me disaffiliated the police union lets assume i did that. They are gone. Now what . What happens . Does anything change . Nothing changes, it is still all the same. The harder thing, quite frankly is for us to engage them and get them to change the culture and thats what we have started doing. A you know, i have set up task force to deal with systemic racism. One of the subcommittees on that task force is dealing with Police Officers. Police and correction officers. Remember many, most officers are ghost are good citizens and trying to do what is right. There are bad cops and they need to be weeded out and we need to help our members get the tools to weed those cops out and have Police Forces become the type of safety providers that every community wants. We have started the process. We have 13 unions who had Police Officers and correction officers in the. We have one union that is independent that is participating in the process as well. And we started that conversation between officers and the community to try and see what we get. Meetings andeveral it is an ongoing process i dont expect it to succeed overnight but in the long run, i think it will be successful. Instead of saying you are out of here, were going to stick and do the hard work, the hard work of changing the culture so that all of our members can be safe and the community they do business in. Liam . I do have one followup. Are you concerned at all by not disaffiliated, that it will undermine your sway with black urban voters . Not at all. Many of the officers are black officers are people of color. There are men and women, gay and straight. Theyre from every walk of life and they are good people they deserve safety on the job, they deserve a collective Bargaining Agreement and we are working ,ith them, but more importantly we are engaging people from the community, the very people you talked about and we are saying lets jointly define what kind of Community Safety we want. What we wanted to look like . What do we wanted to be . Want it to be . Its not going to happen overnight but i think we can get there and its a lot better course of action to stay and tried to change that culture then it is to say you are out of here i am done. I kicked them out and now dont have anything else. Melissa burke from the detroit news, on the yourself. Are you still here . If we have lost melissa, it will go onto to eddie linsky from the washington post. Thank you for doing this. Morning. I wanted to just get a sense from you about differences between 2016 and 2020 in two areas. Can you tell me anything you heard of that your unions are were in terms of turnout pushing the message you said at and then the second question is are you getting any feedback from members . Im ever one of the striking things 2016 with the level of Union Members for donald trump and then do you have any data that suggests that has changed public ted beyond polling . In 2016, trump got three Percentage Points more than romney did it was closer in a lot of important areas, 3 is significan