The Iowa AFL-CIO State Convention Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Labor cannot afford to settle for half-hearted nominees or half-measures that keep in place a system that is destroying our democracy through trade agreements that transfer sovereign power to the World Trade Organization, undermine our economy and devastate workers' ability to defend themselves. "All that harms labor is treason," said President Lincoln. "If any man tells you that he loves America [but] he hates labor, he is a liar." Supporters of the decaying system of injustice continue to advance propositions that are an offense to basic fairness and workers' dignity. With the Team Act they attacked the right to organize. With the Rewarding Performance in Compensation Act, they wanted to strip workers of overtime. In the name of workplace flexibility, they wanted to repeal the Fair Labor Standards Act. With the Paycheck Protection Act they attacked union dues as compulsory and political. They wanted workplace safety rules set by corporate consensus and not by OSHA. They would take us back to the days when workers had no protections or rights. Back to the days of "Sixteen Tons."

No more sixteen tons in America! The soul of the worker is not for sale. It will not be sacrificed upon the corporate altar, nor annihilated by a hostile or indifferent government. The soul of the worker will be redeemed by the enshrinement in law of workers' rights. If in 2004 labor goes up to the mountaintop of our nation's Capitol, it must bring back engraved in stone these rights of working people:

"People have a right to a job.
A right to a safe workplace.
A right to decent wages and benefits.
A right to organize and be represented.
A right to grieve about working conditions.
A right to strike.
A right to fair compensation for injuries on the job.
A right to sue if injured by negligent employers.
A right to security of pension and retirement benefits.
A right to participate in the political process."

These basic rights ought to be inviolate in a democratic society. There can be no true corporate accountability unless corporations are accountable to workers. There can be no accountability to workers unless workers' rights are protected. And workers' rights cannot be protected unless the Democratic Party makes them the centerpiece of its legislative program, and its drive for the White House in 2004. The Democratic Party must be challenged by labor to truly be the party of all the people.

When the Democratic Party rises it must be with the ranks, not from the ranks. "The future of labor is the future of America," said John L. Lewis.

It is the restoration of the rights of workers that will put us at the dawn of a new political age. The rights of workers are core principles of an American Restoration. These aren't mere political principles. These are timeless moral principles about fairness, about equality, about justice.

In the 1660s the English Restoration brought back the royal family to power. The American Restoration will be about restoring the American working family to economic power, to insure that all have jobs, that all have meaningful work and that all make a living wage. "The enthusiasm of falling welfare numbers," said Cardinal Mahoney, "should be tempered by the reality of persistent poverty and wages too meager to provide for a family's needs. Many may be leaving welfare, too few have left poverty." Twenty-five percent of all workers in Iowa earn poverty-level hourly wages. Who can live at $5.15 an hour? The campaign for a living wage is fundamental to making certain that people have more than crumbs when they sit down to eat their daily bread.

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