On Labor Day, let’s thank the hard workers who make this country great
Growing up, I spent my weekends and summers surrounded by drills, punches, lathes, and welding rigs.
My dad owned a union-organized ironworking shop in the Kansas City stockyards for 25 years. In a good year, Dad had 10 to 12 employees. In a tough year, maybe just five, plus my mother — his best saleswoman — my two brothers, and me.
Whenever I joined them in the shop, I saw how much care my dad’s employees took with their work. They never cut corners, because they knew that one mistake could ruin a whole day’s labor. My dad had the same attitude.
The hard work and artistry of his employees was what would put my brothers and me through school. And Dad’s business sense helped to put his workers’ kids through school.
The values that guided my dad’s business all those years aren’t just Kansas City values. They’re American values. In this country, if you work hard, do your part, and treat people right, you should be able to earn a good living — you should be able to give your kids better than you had. That’s how it’s supposed to work in the greatest country in the world.
As a public servant, I’ve tried to protect those values. In fact, one of the first political fights I took on as governor was appointing our state’s AFL-CIO president as the secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia. We pushed hard to make it happen. And when the Republican majority in my state legislature blocked that appointment, I put him in charge of all the state’s workforce programs. Before that, no governor had ever appointed a labor officer to his cabinet.
Together, we pushed to expand technical education, help home health care workers organize, and build major infrastructure projects with union labor. And in the Senate, I’ve championed union workers, from our federal employees to our great shipbuilders in Newport News.
Now, I’m in a different role, as Hillary Clinton’s running mate.
She and I believe that our economy should work for everyone, not just those at the top — and we have detailed plans on how to get us there. Donald Trump has a different view: He says workers’ wages are too high. He wants to give the richest Americans (including himself) literally billions of dollars in tax cuts. And he sees labor unions not as a positive force in workers’ lives, but as an obstacle standing in his way.
We see this in Las Vegas: The Trump Hotel on the Strip is doing everything in its power to stop workers from forming a union, even after they voted to do so. They’ve harassed workers and fired at least one union supporter — it’s outrageous.
We can’t let someone with so little respect for American workers sit behind that desk in the Oval Office. We can’t let Donald Trump have a say over your lives and jobs and security.
Labor unions helped build the great American middle class and the strongest, most dynamic economy in the world. Every day, unions advocate for fair wages, safe working conditions, and dignity for all workers.
That’s why we’re going to make trade work for us—not against us—by rejecting any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages (including the Trans-Pacific Partnership), ramping up trade enforcement, and making investments at home to make us more competitive abroad. American companies are already exporting billions of dollars of products around the world. We want them to sell even more and create more jobs here in the United States.
Hillary and I also believe that a four-year degree shouldn’t be the only path to a good job — that Americans should be able to learn a skill, practice a trade, and make a good living doing it. So we’ll support high-quality union training programs and propose new tax credits to encourage more companies to offer paid apprenticeships.
I know something about this: I co-founded the Career and Technical Education Caucus in the Senate, because I saw how valuable technical skills were in my dad’s shop — and then I brought those skills to students at a Jesuit-run mission school in Honduras. These skills should be integrated throughout our education system, so young people can start learning how to weld or code or cook before they’re in the job market. It just makes sense.
We’re going to rewrite the rules to encourage more companies to do the right thing. If they share profits with their employees, they’ll get a tax credit. But if they move jobs and profits overseas, they’ll have to pay an exit tax. We’re going to fight for a more patriotic tax code that puts American jobs first, and we’re going to fight to raise the minimum wage.
We also need to catch up with how people actually live and work in the 21st century. Today, in many two-parent households, both parents work — so we need quality, affordable childcare. We need to enact paid leave, so you don’t have to lose a paycheck to stay home with your sick kid or parent. And at a time when more women are breadwinners than ever before, we’ve got to have equal pay for women. It’s the right thing to do, both for their families and for our economy.
If Hillary and I win this November, labor unions will have not one, but two friends in the White House. Because our vision of building an economy that works for everyone is labor’s vision too. Always has been, always will be.
We have a tough fight ahead, and we’re going to have to work hard to win this. But Americans know something about hard work. So do I. And so does Hillary Clinton.
So let’s work hard, let’s win in November, and then let’s get to work building an economy that works for everyone, with more good jobs and more opportunities — so every man, woman, boy, and girl in America can go as far as their hard work and talent will take them.
