Trumka: Raising wages is measuring stick for presidential campaign support

WASHINGTON – As the 2016 presidential battle gets underway 18 months before Election Day AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today that “the labor movement’s doors are open to any candidate who is serious about transforming our economy with high and rising wages.”

In a live-streamed speech this morning from the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., Trumka said,

“We have created an agenda for shared prosperity called raising wages. It will be our inspiration and our measuring stick throughout the presidential campaign.  Raising wages is grounded in a fundamental idea-that we can become a high-wage society, a society in which the people who do the work share in the wealth we create.”

He also stressed that the labor movement opposes Fast Track, declaring, “We expect those who seek to lead our nation forward to oppose Fast Track. There is no middle ground, and the time for deliberations is drawing to a close.”

Trumka pointed to the skepticism and cynicism many voters feel, noting that for generations national leaders have either “taken steps that worsened inequality or fiddled around the edges, trying to raise wages in an economy fundamentally built to lower wages.”

“President Obama has spent much of his presidency getting our nation out of a deep economic crisis,” Trumka explained. “Now we have an economy where GDP is up, and the stock market is up, but wages remain flat-and this has happened again and again since the 1970s. Once again,” he said, “America is emerging from an economic crisis-but those of us who count on paychecks are not.

“And that’s not an accident,” Trumka declared. “Workers are being held down on purpose.”

He said the decline in wages, soaring corporate profits and booming CEO pay are not the result “of the wandering and clumsy hand of capitalism.” Instead, he said:

“Since the 1980s, the growing political power of the wealthiest among us has rewritten our labor laws, our trade laws, our tax laws, our monetary policies, our fiscal policies, our financial regulations…all to push wages down and to increase corporate profits, to put speculation over private investment and tax cuts over public investment.”

The results, Trumka said, are runaway inequality, unemployment, falling wages, rising economic insecurity, collapsing infrastructure and deteriorating national competitiveness-all driven by gigantic imbalances in economic and political power.

In the 2016 campaign, “there will be no place to hide for those who aspire to lead America,” he said.

“The problems of income inequality and stagnant wages are so clear, so abundant, that only direct, sweeping action to change the rules will put our nation on a fresh path of progress. We are hungry for a path to a prosperous 21st century. And America’s workers know that the first step on that path is raising wages.”

Trumka said that what he was calling for involved a lot more than just higher salaries. He emphasized that a raising wages agenda is a broad vision that includes earned sick leave, full employment and fair overtime rules for workers. “It also includes taxing Wall Street to pay for massive investments in infrastructure and education, so Wall Street serves Main Street, not the other way around,” he said “and the ability for workers to bargain collectively with employers for good wages and benefits without the fear of retaliation.

“Any candidate who wants to appeal to workers has to put forth a bold and comprehensive raising wages agenda. They must be committed to investing in a prosperous future for America. They must have an authentic voice and a commitment, from the candidate down through his or her economic team, to see this agenda through to completion.”

The above story appeared in the AFL-CIO Now Blog.

Photo: Trumka said that labor will not back any candidate in 2016 who doesn’t fully support a raising wages agenda.  |  AFL-CIO Now Blog