The Soul of the Worker (Page 4)

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

The restoration of the rights of workers in America and throughout the North American continent will begin when we repeal NAFTA. NAFTA has spurred a $360 billion trade deficit, costing 363,000 high-paying jobs, most in manufacturing. This is called free trade. But where is freedom when jobs are lost? Where is freedom when industries threaten to move out of the country unless wages are cut? Where is freedom when the right to bargain collectively is crushed? Where is freedom when a union is broken? Where is freedom when you can't make a mortgage payment? Where is freedom when you can't send your children to college? An economic democracy is a precondition of a political democracy. Where is freedom?

NAFTA has attacked federal laws meant to protect worker rights, human rights and environmental quality principles. It is time to repeal NAFTA. It is time to reclaim state and local sovereignty, which NAFTA has usurped. No NAFTA, no fast track. No more backtrack on democracy. No more backtrack on workers' rights. No more backtrack on human rights. No backtrack on the Bill of Rights.

"The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world," said the founder of the AFL-CIO, Samuel Gompers, in 1887. It is time to return to bilateral trade agreements, nation to nation. It is time for humane trading partnerships where the living wages, benefits and retirement security of workers of each nation constitute a centerpiece of trade pacts.

The American Restoration will be about restoring the physical health of our people with universal healthcare. I worked with the SEIU and all of organized labor in Cleveland to save two urban hospitals from closure. A market-based system of healthcare has brought about closure of hundreds of community hospitals, limited access to healthcare, denied specialized care, driven up the cost and made healthcare a bargaining chip in negotiations, forcing trade-offs for wage increases. A universal healthcare system with prescription drug coverage will protect quality of life and reflect the improved health of our democracy. Our nation has the money to do this.

The questions are, Do we have the political freedom, do we have the will, do we have the courage to transform a system where for tens of millions every accident and every illness carries with it the fear of being unable to afford health?

We must restore the American dream of home ownership through lowering and regulating lending rates, ending predatory lending practices, increasing the percentage of the home mortgage deduction for middle-income people, and stopping home insurance redlining.

"The practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion rejected by the minds and hearts of men." said President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his inaugural address on March 4, 1933. Under FDR the government took responsibility for the economic vitality of consumers. Today, the government protects credit-card companies, banks and insurance companies.

Our nation will be restored with a new manufacturing policy, where the maintenance of our industrial base is understood to be vital to our national economic welfare. We can fuel domestic steel production and consumption by rebuilding our nation's infrastructure with American-made steel, utilizing the productive capacity of our mills. We need to spend at least $500 billion to rebuild our schools, roads, bridges, ports, sewer systems, water systems, government buildings. A highly trained, highly skilled work force backed by Davis-Bacon guarantees will make it happen. A federal bank of infrastructure modernization can be created to fund this program with zero-interest loans to the states.

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