Good morning everybody. Im going to call the meeting to order here. My name is Mark Trumbull and im the editor of the Christian Science monitor. Welcome and especially welcome to our guest. Todays guest is liz shuler of the afl cio. She is president of the Labor Federation and were very glad to have you with us again as another labor day weekendrolls around. A little background, president shuler grew up in a union household. Her father was a power lineman and longtime member of the electrical workers local 125 portlandgeneral electric. In oregon. And her mother worked in the Companies Service and design department. Miss shuler attended university of oregon and insert my own day docs go docs phrase sense that the alma mater of my fatherinlaw. During college miss shuler worked summers at the Electric Company and i would say or life since then is testament there can be a future forpeople who are in journalism degrees. After graduation she returned to Portland General Electric to organize workers who were in nonunionized clerical roles for mothers. She then went on to lead other organizing efforts for the International Brotherhood of electrical workers in both oregon andcalifornia. In 2009 she became the first one to serve as aflcio secretarytreasurer, the federations number two official and now she stands as the first woman to the president of the aflcio and the organizations tiroughly 56 year history. Again, welcome and now to some brief ground rules. We are on the record here. Please also know live blogging or tweeting. In short no filing of any kind until the breakfast is over. Once the session ends at 10 00 there is no embargo and we will email a rough transcript from this breakfast to all reporters here shortly after weconclude. As many of you know if youd like to ask a question you can send me a signal andill call on you in order. Now president shuler if youd like to make some brief remarks wewelcome. The floor is yours. Thank you to the Christian Science monitor for listingthis. This is not an annual thing for me as well. I know a long time my predecessor did this breakfast. My first or second week, as president last year when i attended this breakfast so i was what they call a deer in headlights at that moment but this year were in a very different place i would iwant to thank you for inviting me back. Thank all the working people in theehroom working behind the scenes are making this breakfast as well. And you know, this is an incredible moment to be leading the American Labor movement. Its the honor of my life. It is very, very personal for me and my family story is similar to so many families where it really was Union Membership that created that stability and pathway to a better life for me and my family. My dad and i grew up in a one room from picking shack. He and his four siblings often went hungry. Right after graduating from high school he enlisted in the marine corps and went straight to vietnam. And when he came back he returned to oregon. He found a job as a whole bigger back when the holes were done by hand. At Portland General Electric as you mentioned. But it was a power linemans apprenticeship that put him on the path to a good union job. And that changed everything. And one generation our family had a roof over our heads, enough to eat. Such a different experience than what my father had growing up and i would say that is the power of unions. Thats what idw 125 when meant to my family and from my dad i would say i learned the valueof the union card. My mom as you heard also worked at Portland General Electric and i worked there and we were both Clerical Workers. We didnt have a union. The power lineman did and that difference was what weshowed me that in addition to good pay t and good benefits that it also meant dignity and it meant respect. It meant having voice, being heard. And thats how i got my start. You mentioned we started organizing Clerical Workers as a company and it is abouthaving oneonone conversations which we are hearing so much about these days. The importance of talking to each otherfacetoface. Thats what Union Organizing is and many of the women i worked with in clerical work, thats what we did. We started having oneonone conversations about their workplace so nethats where i g my start and i learned how to organize from my mom because she was one of the fiercest organizers. She got called to the ceos office for a one on one audience meeting during that drive but i feel that to fast forward to this moment today, its a historic moment for organizing in this country. Millions of people want to join a union and their organizing unions across industries, across this country. And there have been historic investments in clean energy, technology, infrastructure. Were coming off this wave of lots of activity in congress and thats going to lead to a competitive economy with a sustainable environment and the promise of goodquality jobs. And our democracy is at a crossroads. Will we build a moreinclusive and responsive democracy . Or will we allow ourselves tobe divided . For each of these opportunities and challenges there is one response, one constant and its unions. And since i was here last you may remember we had striped mb over where workers everywhere from nabisco to john deere were rising up, using their collective power on the line to ask for more. And the momentum has only built from there and for every story you hear about working people organizing and joining together to form unions at amazon or starbucks, there n are six or seven or more stories in other industries so just this summer over 100 nurses at the hospital in coral gables florida organize. Rei workers in the bay area one their union election. Sheet Metal Workers and painters have organized in shipyards in alaska and louisiana. Aircraft mechanics in north carolina, 550 researchers at Mount Sinai Medical School have organized a union in new york city. 500 auto workers in michigan won their union, 200 Hotel Workers in austin texas one and organizing drive. Hundreds more in places you would never expect. Museums, Cultural Workers in los angeles, baltimore, rnew yo. Hundreds of workers in what is a new and emerging industry, the cannabis industry. I always get a little snicker when i mention the cannabis industry so im fromoregon and i know it well they have come together to form unions. This is so unexpected, so surprising and it just shows theres no industry or workplace that the union doesnt belong. Its every type of job. And working people, the reason their organizing and numbers are so high is because theyre tired of being called essential one minute, coming out of the pandemic we heard it all the time. And treated as expendable the next. Theyre tired of working more and getting less in return while their bosses collect bigger paychecks and my racket. Theyre connecting the dots and realizing together theyhave the power to fight back. And in fact gallup just released their latest bowling. You all probablyknow this. Im in a room with welleducated people but that whole found d a record high 71 percent of people in this country supportunions. So i can tell you when im on picket lines are talking to organizers there is an energy and a drive unlike we have seen among working people in a generation. And what keeps me going every day is hearing from them and writing their voices into these conversations and keeping my finger on the pulse of what working people elare thinking a feeling so we need in this moment to bring as many people as possible from the margins of the economy to the center. Making sure women and people of color are helping to drive our agenda as they are the future of our workforce. And we need to build a Labor Movement that is as modern and dynamic as our workplaces are and the needs of working people will be different as work is changing and technology evolve. We the Labor Movement after the fall with a and we have to grow the number of people in unions so working people are driving the future , not just the er so growing that Labor Movement is the first goal coming out of our Convention Last june we announced onthe center for translational organizing. And our baseline goal is to organize 1 million new workers because we know growing the number of people in unions is going to create that power balance that we need to fix our broken economy. The ctl will be the place, the center of gravity where we make those plans to grow together. Where were bringing sethe power of all our unions and landing on specific goals and its where we will get out of our silos and build a movement ath is taking on veryspecific goals together. Particularly in nonunion areas of the economy like gig work, like amazon, like the Clean Energy Economy. And were also taking that same all in approach on organizing through our political work and i know everyone here isanxious to talk about the election. But weve been in the business of oneonone facetoface conversations since our inception. And people are recognizing the power of those tactics. That really in this moment erwhere everyone is so polarize and so divided the only way you breakthrough is by talking to each other. Sounds so old but new. And thats the way you break through the noise. When it comes to the 2022 midterms where not only in our sweet spot because we know how to , do this but we are uniquel positioned to make a winning difference because we are at the top of this infrastructure that no one else has. We have a network of state aflcios, Central Labor Councils in every zip code in this country so were taking that network and turning it up to 11 as they say. Working people are reclaiming our power everywhere from the workplace to the ballot box. Were organized and we are ready towin. So with that i appreciate the time and look forward tohaving that conversation. Wonderful. Ill start with a question or two and then wewill open it up. You mentioned the health of our democracy being at stake and i wonder, this is kind of a broad question but what do unions, what can they bring . What can you bring that connects the dots from Economic Health of workers to the Political Health of our countr . How do you see that working and as part of that is there something to do with the fact that the middle class seems to be smaller as the share of the whole society and it was way back 50 years ago. We would argue because Union Density usually tracks the health of working people in the economy but your question is so timely because youre right. People are, theyre frustrated, theyre fed up because the economy is broken and thats translating into our politics and were seeing that frustration manifest itself in the way people respond in elections so we would say that unions are a pillar of a healthy democracy and you see it around the world that unions have always been sort of bedrock to the foundation of a healthy economy and a healthy society. So as unions get stronger, our democracy gets stronger so our oufundamental role and responsibility is to educate our members and all working people frankly about how to write the scales or balance the scales in the economy coming together collectively and that when you come together collectively you have or powerful in your workplace and your ability to influence those decisions eight on capitol hill. So i think we saw that demonstrated in this last year alone with the investment that have beenmade. In congress. Its because working people demanded it and the last election we made it very clear what they were looking for. They wanted more investments in clean energy to grow a stable future and create good jobs. They wanted investments in things like our health care and safety and health on the job and coming out of the pandemic it couldnt be more important so i think they are deeply connected that the Labor Movement again uniquely positioned to reach real working people in actual workplaces all across this country in every state and every community. We can be a messengers, we can be a trusted source for information and help people connect those dots to what theyre feeling, their frustrations andactually how to make the change they so desperately want their politics. Been a followup, you mentioned the strong pulling numbers of your favorability overall and yet you know, theres a lot fewer people in unions than there used to be. Is there something that unions themselves need to do better . To make this case that youre making. That its time to rebuild. Were always looking in the mirror obviously trying to be more effective and more relevant to working people and what they need and what they deserve especially as the workplaces changing and we need to be more dynamic and modern and inclusive to reflect the changes happening in the workplace. But i also believe that the fundamental of our labor laws are so broken that thats mostly the root of the issue, why so many people want to support unions yet have trouble joining them. We know that the law of the land, the National Relations act encourages unionization. It is a fundamental right in this country to be able to join a union freely. However, that law has been stripped away after time and its been tilted in favor of corporations. Who dont want to see people form unions because they perceive it as a threat to their ability to run their business. So what we need is to reform our labor laws so that it affected the bspirit of nation Labor Relations act and gives people the rights they deserve the voice that they deserve in the workplace. To be to freely join unions so that if you see a partner at starbucks that there truly treated as a partner and enabled to form unions. So our legislation we been backing called the prozac for a number of years we talked about it last year of course does that. It performs the law so that it makes the intimidation tactics and hostile environment that companiescreate illegal. So that employees are forced to sit and listen to antiunion propaganda against their will. Theyre not fired or for the basic exercising of basic rights. Which we see in campaign after campaign and i think im so glad you are covering starbucks and amazon the way you are because its brought shine the light on the tactics that have beenhappening for decades. The fact that there are unionbusting consultants hired to you know, harass people and intimidate them. And weve seen it time and time again so i think labor law reform is the key ingredient here. To enable people to join unions without fear and of course you are constantly looking for the Labor Movement to be more responsive to the needs of working people as we modernize our economy. Now we will go first to neils of cq roll call. Rather predictably it is a bit of a political question. The president is going to wisconsin and pennsylvania on monday on labor day for labor related events t. Something you said about how youre having success in organizing in places that are not traditionally where you wouldthink they would be. Leads me to the question of how the likelihood that the membership of the unions is in some of these places, whether or not traditionally union may not be democrats. They may not be people who onwould traditionally be biting voters or people who youre going to gop for democrats in november. How do you deal with the membership that may not look, there are other political positions may not align with what the Labor Movements goals are at the federal level . That is the question that i think these two moments where in our country where we have a lot of divergent views and in fact were pretty polarized as a country. I would say the Labor Movement membership kind of tracks similarly. We have members that certainly will disagree with candidates that perhaps have been endorsed at the local level. But those are democratic processes. So that the numbers on the ground make those decisions. A deliberate based on the issues and where candidates stand and thats one thing i hope you take away is that we are an issue driven organization. We dont put candidates first, we put workers first and we look through the lens of working people when were n identifying the issues that esw measure those candidates against so it happens to be that President Biden who is a democrat has been very much pro union president. So we are proud of that track record he has had and his administration has had. That translates down at every level. From city council to congress and the United States senate. And through an issuesbased lens so what i would say to a member that is perhaps unhappy that the democrat is endorsed is to look at whats underneath that. Look beyond the party label and look at the issues we are measuring so is that candidate supporting raising the minimum wage, is that candidate supporting stronger safety and health protections, osha protections. Is that candidate actually supportive of collective bargaining and forming unions and thats usually where we fall off is that many republicans disagree with the fundamentals of collective bargaining and being in a union so how do you support candidatesthat disagree with your very existence . So what we try to do is be very objective in an issuesbased approach and we can talk more about that as we go but we are taking a different approach this year in that we arent flying in from the National Level and basically trying to land on community and pushed a particular brand of political program. Were actually doing thereverse. Its more of a grassroots effort that then influences what we do nationally because its driven around issues and really listening. To our members aland what are t issues that they care about. Not what we in washington dc they should care about but locally. So im hopeful