Thats why you convince people of the other side of the aisle to vote for your stuff. Thats why we have so much contention over health care. Not one republican voted for it. If there had been where the democrats came closer to our side, we would not be having this big war on the country. The way i look at issues is, you do not have to agree with anything. We are a mixture of people from parties and all walks of life. Lets say we take 10 issues. We will not agree on all 10. Maybe three out of 10. Why not work on the three out of 10 instead the seven out of 10 . [applause] you have shown support for a flat tax, are you worried about inequailty resulting . Some of the wealthy paid no taxes. Some of the wealthy corporations pay no taxes under the current system. Another interesting fact over the last five years, income equality has gotten worse in the even though we raised tax rates. I am of the opinion that in way you stimulated the economy and the way you create jobs is by leaving more money in the economy. You may say it sounds incredibly simplistic but it is true. The private economy creates jobs. We have to have a certain amount of government but we should minimize it. It is not too good at that. [applause] i often say it is not in the government is inherently stupid, although it is a debatable point, it is they do not get the same signals. We need to have a National Defense and it cannot be done privately and the same with the judiciary and roads and education at things where the government will be involved. And so, you can argue it should occur. We should not extend it to all walks of life. Does the government need to deliver the mail . That is a problem. They are not good at that. We should minimize what the government does and try to maximize the private sector and that is where jobs are created. It is getting beyond the hurdle. I can go to a Poor Community in the mountains of kentucky and i say bring me the 10 richest people because i want to reduce your taxes and you may be horrified. We all work for rich people. The man who employs 100 people probably is the richest man in town. How will i get him to higher hire 110 people . We have to get over this that the rich are bad. There are exceptions to the rule and we should fix them. Some ways a flat tax includes more of those people and less of the people by having less and deductions. I am for reducing everybodys taxes. Not just the middle class, but everyones taxes. [applause] and this is going to be here very last question. We are here at the Number One Public University in the world. [applause] biased,re not at all right . Of course not. This relates to that, do you believe the federal government should play a role in supporting Higher Education . I believe in general that the more local control of education, the better. You are not at the federal university of california berkeley but the university of berkeley. You are a state school. And so, education is primarily been at the state level. There is federal influence like pell grants. I decide to leave those alone when i create budgets. A lot of people are dependent on them. We have to figure a way forward. The big problem is that getting an education. Education. Tting an we have plenty of grants. That is not the problem. The problem is not getting a grant and getting and school but getting a job but when you get out and how youll pay your loans back. The income not as large, a lot of people are making something inadequate. One of the ways we can fix and help students is maybe give tax credits to students as they get out. And not forgive your loans but reduce your taxes because most people will be working. Let reduce your tax burdens. Thank you, everybody. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] the president of aflcio said that the unions are leading the fight regarding Immigration Reform and increasing minimum wage. He spoke at the economic summit about the trade agenda and collective bargaining rights and the state of the economy for about 40 minutes. We are almost at the signature cocktail time. We are very lucky to have Richard Trumka from the aflcio for our last session. Were going to try something a little bit different. We are going to have Steve Cummins and Margaret Carlson interview Richard Trumka at the same time. [applause] put you there. Put margaret there. Lets put you in the middle. Im on the far left. It has been all of you all of you may be tired and you deserve a medal or mug or tshirt for being with us for most of the day, but those who have been videoing this deserve two each. I want to thank them for being with us today. [applause] margaret . It is great to be here with you. A real working man. Apparently, the people i know have never really had a job where they work with their hands. I mean, i wouldnt know what to do. We dont have as much affinity with how hard it is. When i see a war on working people, which if you give the many benefits, they are basically lazy and will stop working. You give them Unemployment Benefits and they wont work because they dont want to. Most of the people i know, including my brother who was laid off a year ago, they are dying to get jobs. They want to work. This is a leading question to you, but it really bothers me, the attitude that is now prevailing i thought you were going to give me a ruthlessly devilish question. I know. Are you disappointed . It really is disappointing, because i see people every day trying struggling to try to get by, to send their kids to school, to keep a home. Wages have been flat. Here is the economic reality of this generation. Productivity has doubled, and wages have stayed flat. That money has actually been stolen from working people. The compact used to exist between working people and capitalism has been shredded. People are both right now, two things. They are very angry about it. But at the same time, they are very hopeful. We see signs right now of a real historic moment in the United States that is changing the debate from what it was to how we wait raise wages for working people. And you see it from the pope to the president to the fast food workers to the daycare workers. Workers everywhere are talking about how we raise wages come how we Work Together to raise wages. How we raise wages, how we Work Together to raise wages. I think my legacy, i think probably the Reagan Administration where we were all ruggedly independent and we dont need anybody. And if you work with people and you need people, then somehow you are inferior, that is taking a toll on the country right now. There is not anybody out there that does not need others help. Can i just do a softball followup . Please do. Thank god for the pope, by the way. He is one of mine. He makes me proud to be a catholic. He really does. I know. But he makes me out to be gay. [laughter] we are all proud up here. The gays love the pope. You love the robes, and the shoes. That is such a fact. The gap, however, did not grow as much until more recently. There is no maximum wage, as far as i can tell, for ceos. There is no maximum wage. Whereas we are going to fight forever over a minimum wage. That is absolutely right. If you look at it, the ceos salaries have increased 831 times over what the minimum wage is. If we had kept pace, if minimum wage had kept pace with ceos, it would be 28. 75 right now. If we had kept pace with productivity, it would be about 18. 75. If you we had kept pace with inflation, it would be about 10. 75. We could lift millions out of poverty. That has got to be a good thing, no matter what party you are in. It is a good thing for us, for the economy, and for the country. And were going to fight over the same tired old dead arguments that they say. Well, if you increase mental weight, will lose jobs. We have been at 37 times and if you increase the minimum wage, you will lose jobs. We have increased in 37 times and we have not had that happen yet. Would you rather keep wages where they are, or get a rate it a raise to 10. 10 and risk being fired . I know what they will tell you. They will say, i will take the risk. I need the money. Work should reward people and lift people out of poverty. It should not trap people in poverty. And right now, we are already at the minimum wage and working 40 hours a week and you end up in poverty at the end of the year. It is trapping them in poverty. And we have people who even advocate doing away with the minimum wage. Im going to let steve pick up and ask the hard hitting questions. Ive been worried all day about what question i would lead with. I have been giddy and trying to be comedic. I was going to ask, does rich trumka day trade stocks. And then i thought, maybe i better not ask a question. They did not seem appropriate. Did you say stocks . Its such a ridiculous question. It could be socks. The reason this discussing this topic we are discussing i find a bit traumatic and difficult is that when you think about how turbocharge the economy is we had a dinner last night with a guy who works in science and technology, and he give us insight into the transformational change of technology, robotics, and internet in everything, except the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared. But i sometimes worry that these discussions of labor are so trapped in the past that we seem trapped about preserving equities that used to be there. And when you begin thinking about the world that we will have five years from now, its not just ipads and iphones. We have a completely transformed relationship with technology. I dont know how much of it will be made in the u. S. , but it will have a transformational impact on people, workers, how people interact. The American LaborMovement Thinking about that . Are you thinking about not preserving what we have had in the past, but positioning yourself for the future that is coming like a sin on me at us . Like a tsunami at us . We adopted these economic policies that were storing to lead us over the cliff before the recession. And then the recession comes and it leads us over the cliff. And now after the recession is over, people pretend might none of this happened and they are trapped in the same economic policies that led us there. They wont analyze things. They wont say, maybe we should really examine whether it is total deregulation, whether giving wall street everything it wants, whether doing with multinational doing away with multinational corporations, maybe theres a better way to do it. But what we are hearing is, if you take a little more around the edges, then everything will be ok. It wont be. It will lead us to the same exact result. Being trapped in the past is a dangerous thing. The Labor Movement for years sort of denied what was happening. We deny that globalization was going to make a difference. But i think about 10 or 12 years ago, that started to change. If you look right now, the largest provider of Adult Education and skills training in the United States other than the military is the Labor Movement. We provide skills training for everything. We are trying to reach out and get people careers. We are trying to reach back and give people remedial training, so communities kids in communities that have lost and cannot pass an Entrance Exam to an apprenticeship school, we can given the schools the skills that they need to get there to give them a career. We think about it all the time. We think about the policies that are necessary. We think about what it is going to take to have an economy that works for everybody. Not just the top one percent, steve, but for everybody. And we see precious little in the way of new ideas coming out of wall street, and quite frankly, a lot of the policymakers here in d. C. , and even at the state level. Thank you. Mike roman, our u. S. State representative can i have a drip of water . Yes. Folks, can you toss me a bottle of water . This is going to be a short interview. There we go. That one was yours. This is a lesson that everybody ought to learn. We have water and everybody has a water. Ambassador roman was here and, of course, he has been working on these two big trailed trade deals, tpp and tpi the with europe. My question is whether aflcio has found itself supportive of any of the big trade deals that we have done, and if not, what would it take for you to be supportive of any trade deal . And what would it take for you to be supportive of these trade deals . First of all, we have supported some trade deals. They have not been many, because most, if not all, of the trade agreement have been fashion on the nafta model. Even its creators and a couple of others have said it failed. They were supposed to raise Living Standards on both sides of the border. They havent. Living standards in all three countries have stagnated or dropped. They were supposed to increase our trade outland. We went from a surplus to a deficit. It was supposed to create jobs and we have lost jobs. As long as it is predicated on a nafta model, which is a failed model, it will be difficult. When tpp came up, we submitted over 300 recommendations. I dont know how many of those are going to get through and make it to the offering table, let alone agreement. You dont know because you are not in the process, not consulted, and we dont see what is going on in the trade deal . The actual negotiations and the product are secret. We dont know. We have been consulted. And to mike frohmans credit, he asked us what we want. But there is a difference between saying, what would you like, and seeing what you would like coming out in the final product. He could ask all he wants. Or he could never ask. As long as what we want and need comes out in the final product, then we are ok. I am fearful that precious little will be in the tpp and we will be in another trade agreement that is modeled after nafta. If it does, that we would have to oppose that, because that has been in our opinion corrosive for working people in this country and has not been good for anybody. There are a lot of things that could be done to help us. We could go after currency manipulation. That gives people in 19 countries around the pacific rim an unfair advantage over american producers and manufacturers. There are other ways that they violate the trade agreement. China does not enforce its child labor laws, prison labor laws, health and safety laws, or minimum wage laws. That gives them an almost 60 advantage over an american producer. Before you go opening the door, you have 40 or currency and 60 of the other, and they have a 100 advantage over the american producer. We think that is right fair. We want a level playing field. Im hopeful that we can support it. The trade agreement with europe, that is a different story. It may be that europe is in the position that we are with mexico. If they make a bad agreement, or an agreement that is to our vantage, we will suck jobs out of to our advantage, we will suck jobs out of europe like you havent seen. You are ok with that. I dont think that is good. I think it is a shortterm strategy. Would i like to see jobs here . Absolutely, i would. But any trade agreement that is a oneway trade agreement with any part in with any partner will not endure. We need a balanced agreement that has both sides winning and the workers both win. Margaret . Is there an enemy within the movement, where workers say, for instance, in tennessee, are voting against collective bargaining . Well, lets be truthful. Workers in tennessee did not vote against collective bargaining. They voted because they thought they would lose their jobs if they voted for collective bargaining. Look, this will come as a surprise to a lot of people in this room. The policy of the United States is to encourage the process of collective bargaining. It is written right into the law, not to tolerate, not to allow, not to be neutral towards, but to encourage it. Now, senator corker he didnt read that, did he . He skipped class that day. He had a governor that said, if you vote for collective bargaining, we will take away all of the subsidies of this company. He had a head of the senate and ahead of the house that said, we will take stuff away and you will lose your job if you vote for collective bargaining. They were not even doing what the employer wanted. Because in this specific instance, volkswagen wanted to have a codetermination council, a works council, where we could actually Work Together and help land and do things, and actually succeed. They werent worried about unionism. The fight is about a union being there, not whether it is good for the company or bad for the company or whether the orders want it or do not wanted. But what is good for them politically. They stepped across the line and they broke the law. I think other people in the area will be emboldened when we get a new election and they will join a union too. There was an oped that said, im entitled to it a difference of opinion and freedom of expression. He is not entitled to violate the law and threaten people if they exercise their rights. Not even a senator is entitled to that. Interesting. [laughter] you know, it is interesting. You were one of those workers that was denied collective bargaining, its not real interesting. It is sad and tragic. Inequality in this country grows. Upward mobility in this country is growing. At the bottom end of the led see countries right now when it comes to upward mobility. There is only one way to eliminate inequality in this country, and that is, to give workers the collective right to bargain collectively with their employers. This year, whether you have a union or not, every worker ought to be able to bargain collectively for better wages with their employer. You dont have to have a union, but you can get together and they cannot fire you or discriminate or discipline you for that. Look, unless we find a solution to inequality, at a certain level of inequality, it becomes selfperpetuating. Those that have the most then make the rules, the tax little the tax rolls, the labor laws. They even make the voting laws, whether you can vote or not. It becomes selfperpetuating. The middle class in this country will only be restored if we give workers Bargaining Power and the ability to negotiate a