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Address of International Secretary-Treasurer
Jerry J. O'Connor
IBEW Political/Legislative Conference
Washington, DC
September 8, 2003

Jobs are disappearing. Layoffs are rampant. Health care costs are soaring. State governments are bankrupt. And tonight is Monday night, so

In 2000, our guy won more votes but had the election stolen. In 2002, our so-called allies wimped out when our adversaries called unions security risks.

And now theyre trying to take away overtime and just about everything else that the labor movement won in the 20^th century.

And by the way -- good morning. Thanks for being here.

We know why were here the launch of something big -- organizing for a campaign in 2004 in which we will change the face of American politics.

We know its an uphill climb against the entrenched economic forces of our nation. We face at least two major realities: First, we havent prevailed in the past two elections and second, we cant succeed this time just by complaining.

Our road back to a just and decent America lies in the basics, the bread and butter issues that motivate working families. Pain has a way of focusing the mind, and I hope that some good can come out of the pain working America is now going through.

So we have to make clear clearly what we oppose. To our members and to working Americans, we have to be ready to explain precisely why we oppose them and what we see as the better way, the way that serves everyone with fair shares, and does not heap benefits on the elites of our society and droppings on the rest of us.

It seems that no matter what is happening to the lives of real people no matter how many industrial jobs are being eliminated no matter how much income inequality grows the elite in our society still tell us tax cuts equal job creation. We say job creation equals job creation and that means investment in America and its people.

It was particularly painful to see last week that, for the second year in a row, a union president put on a Labor Day rally for the President in exchange for a ride on Air Force One. Labor Day, our day, a celebration of work day a day of hopes for a better workplace. A time to unveil a bold new idea designed to invigorate the economy and energize the populace.

What did President Bush give us? A new bureaucrat. No kidding, the Administrations bold new idea for the future of Work in America is a new assistant secretary for manufacturing . . . and that post isnt even in Labor, its in the Department of Commerce. Thats it, a new assistant secretary, thats the program. It brings to mind a letter Abraham Lincoln once wrote to a constituent who offered him good new ideas. "Thank you for sending me your good new ideas," Lincoln responded. "Unfortunately, your good ideas arent new and your new ideas arent good."

But saying tax cuts and a new assistant secretary of commerce constitute job creation also carries a disturbing arrogance, a sort of thumb in the eye, a harsh piece of partisanship for Labor Day. This Administration sees workers and their unions not as the bone and marrow of our democracy, but as political enemies because we endorse Democrats.

We all understand that no role for President Bush is as important as commander-in-chief and all of us join in full support for that role. Im a veteran, as I know many of you are, and I will never offer anything but full support and best wishes for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere on this troubled globe. Theyre doing their duty. But those boots on the ground deserve a coherent game plan, a chance to do their jobs with reasonable odds on completing a tour of duty and returning safely. And even more, they should be able to return to a country that can offer them something like the opportunity to find a job.

Let me recall another era in our history, when World War II ended and the next three Presidents we elected were Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. A decorated captain of the artillery from World War I, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and the celebrated skipper of the PT-109.

Now close your eyes and see if you can envision any one of them as President putting on a flight suit to appear on the deck of an aircraft carrier? Of course you cant.

They each had too much respect for the Office of the President of the United States. And having served with our troops, they sure as hell wouldnt demean the brave men and women of the USS Abraham Lincoln by using them as background props for a re-election campaign ad.

Then there is another painful story the adventures of two companies, United Defense and Halliburton.

United Defense is involved in virtually everything U.S. troops need. It supplies virtually every support service our troops would ever need, plus a major share of the hardware of war Bradley Fighting Vehicles, the M4 Command and Control Vehicle, the Crusader, and so on down a long list. United Defense is owned by the Carlyle Group, which bought it in 1997. Carlyle is the 11^th largest defense contractor in the United States because of its ownership of companies making tanks, aircraft wings and other equipment. In all, Carlyles 164 companies generated $16 billion in revenues in the year 2000.

George Herbert Walker Bush our 41^st president -- works for the Carlyle Group, for many years as a senior consultant and now as a member of the Board of Directors.

Halliburton, as all construction hands know, is the parent company of the infamous Brown & Root, founder of the Associated Builders and Contractors. During the first gulf war, Halliburton did exceedingly well, in part because of Defense Department contracts. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense. After the war, after George H.W. Bush was defeated for re-election, Dick Cheney became CEO at Halliburton. The company nosedived, in part from acquiring a subsidiary with an asbestos liability. But then the Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush President and Dick Cheney became Vice President. Theres another war in the Gulf and Brown & Root reports a net profit of $26 million in the latest quarter, in part from the nearly $2 billion in government contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq, some without competitive bidding.

Halliburton pays $1 million a year to Vice President Cheney in what is called "deferred retirement benefit."

Moral of the two stories: Like the rich and the poor, the Corporate Board Room and the White House Cabinet Room are also just alike, except the Cabinet Room has more money.

Meanwhile, back here on Planet Earth where real people live and have to work for a living, every day brings more reports of layoffs. America has lost 15 percent of our manufacturing jobs since George Bush took office a total of 2.5 million jobs. Retirement security for Americans has been derailed, with $175 billion lost in 401(k) savings in the year 2001 alone.

At 6.2 percent, unemployment is at its highest rate in nine years . . . since we recovered from recession of the early 1990s. And while the official unemployment is at 6.2 percent, it is 7 percent if you count discouraged workers those who have been unable to find work and have given up the search. And unemployment is 10 percent if you count one-half of the under employed those who are working part-time or short hours because full-time work is not available to them.

What is going to happen to these people? In the boom times of the 1990s, the economy absorbed many displaced workers, even if they couldnt find employment equivalent to what they had. Now, however, we have the phenomenon of what economists call the "jobless recovery." And the job loss is not just among industrial workers. One recent study projects a loss of 3 million white-collar jobs by the year 2015. And right now, the economists at the Economic Policy Institute tell us, "The decline in employment opportunities has actually been greater for college graduates than for high school dropouts."

Remember all those newspaper editorial writers who said NAFTA was no problem because all we were losing were low-end, low-skill manufacturing jobs. Wonder what they say now? Ill tell you this, most of the foreign trade editorials I read in the Washington Post and elsewhere could be written by a robot. After all, robots are delivering quite well over on right-wing Fox News, but they pass if off as news.

On the topic of trade agreements, have you listened to the Democratic presidential candidates? They sound a lot different than the Democrats the last time we were trying to beat a sitting President named Bush. Back then, we had to settle for a "side agreement" on worker rights in a proposal called NAFTA. That clause turned out to be worthless when it was up to the World Trade Organization to interpret and enforce. But listen to the Democratic candidates now and you can hope theyve learned a little about exploitation both here and abroad.

From the end of World War II until 2001, every President of the United States presided over a net creation of jobs. Through all phases of boom and bust and in-between, our economy kept creating more jobs than were lost. Until now. We are losing an average of 69,000 jobs per month during the 32 months of this Presidency, the worst record in 58 years.

In the meantime, at least 41.2 million Americans are without health coverage, and the total climbs steadily. That squeezes the health care system and forces the costs onto those of us who have coverage. In negotiation after negotiation, health care is the backbreaker issue.

The Clinton surplus is long gone, the deficit has already hit $480 billion . . . reaching the half-trillion mark far sooner than projected. The cost to maintain armed forces in Iraq has reached $1 billion a week. And that doesnt include the cost of rebuilding in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? Thats the nation that is now trying to paper over the potholes in its medieval roadways with IOUs from the nations of the developed world.

One of the rare smidgens of good U.S. economic news is that the Gross Domestic Product is growing at a good clip, a rate of 2.4 percent a year . . . but then they say 70 percent of the growth is from defense spending. It doesnt take an economist to see something is wrong there. We are climbing high up on toward a fantasy, like Jack up his Beanstalk, insisting there is a pot of gold up there somewhere. How do we know? Because on Labor Day in Ohio the President told us so.

The largest employer in the United States is Wal-Mart, paying $7 an hour here in America and that doesnt include what tensions they cause in the world by forcing their suppliers to pay slave wages in Muslim nations like Pakistan and Indonesia.

In Wal-Mart America, wage earners in America are suffering from a bigger and bigger gap. In 1980, the average CEO in top American corporations made 42 times the average workers pay. By the year 2000, Business Week magazine reports that the gap had risen to 531 times that of the average worker. If the average workers salary had kept pace it would be $173 an hour now instead of $14. And the minimum wage would be $78 instead of $5.15.

Wal-Marts success in forcing wages down is not confined to this country. Wal-Mart also forces its suppliers to pay a lot less in exploiting cheap labor around the world, including places like Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan or Tunisia. Those are Muslim nations and they evaluate the "development" offered by globalization, they see slave wages offered by suppliers of bottom feeders like Wal-Mart.

Our own numbers in the IBEW are reflecting the downward trend in the economy. We all know the body blows suffered by manufacturing and the recession plus cutthroat competition has hit hard in telecommunications. Construction has turned down and deregulation and restructuring continue to be code words for downsizing. Our government members in the defense industry are threatened with having their union rights abolished just as it was done in Homeland Security a year ago. Union-wide, membership was down 3.43 percent in 2002. We go as the economy goes . . . that we have always known.

Obviously, were fed up. Obviously, were angry. But now comes the challenge channel that righteous anger into motivation for the 2004 elections. We need allies in elected office who share our dream of rebuilding our nation in the prosperous machine it once was. One of the tricks of course is to endorse and elect the right kind of allies the kind who back up their campaign promises with positive action. The kind who realize that they represent all the people, not just the ones with the fattest wallets.

You know. Youve been there. And its exactly because of your experience and your dedication that you are the ones who can make it happen, who can build a better America. You know for years, any hint of progressive legislation you know, like a tax bill that makes the wealthiest and most powerful Americans pay their fair share the right wing machine cranks up the "class warfare" charge.

Maybe its time our response to that charge changed. Maybe its time we told our opponents and their apologists that the Cold War is over. When they accuse us of class politics, we say "You damn betcha." The working class is the only class we know. There aint nobody here but us wage-earners and we intend to keep it that way. This nation wasnt founded with positions for a bunch of earls or counts or dukes and we dont intend to create any such titles for the people United Defense or Enron or Halliburton or World.Com. Were class warriors and our winning the war will mean no more preferential treatment for anyone in the tax code or elsewhere in the federal budget.

Of course, to be real class warriors we have to go to war, to fight for freedom and democracy because we know unions do not flourish in unjust societies. Working people do not advance in nations run by Wal-Mart and Brown & Root.

We wont win every battle, but were going to win the war, simply because we will not quit. We have been pushed pretty far into the political wilderness in the good results in the past two general elections, so what are going to do this time?

At a similar low point in our election efforts the late AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said heres what were going to do: "We are going to bury the bastards and organize their pallbearers on our way to winning the future."