Once, a union job at GM or AT&T was a bridge to success. Now, a nonunion Wal-Mart job is a bridge to nowhere.

Employers need to recognize that the world has changed and there are people who would like to help them provide solution in ways that are new, modern and that add value to companies.

I would say that workers in general, and white workers particularly, are correct that their economic wellbeing is deteriorating.

We can bring to earth a new world from the ashes of the old because our union transforms us the powerless into the powerful. And I ask you to join together in using all that power-all that strength to make the dreams of all workers and communities around the world come true.

It has no enforceable standards to stop a union from conspiring with employers to keep another stronger union out or from negotiating contracts with lower pay and standards that members of another union have spent a lifetime establishing.

Manufacturing and other unskilled professions that were union jobs, that allowed people to live a middle-class life, are disappearing both because unions are disappearing and because of the global nature of the economy.

Wal-Mart is the sewer pipe through which good jobs are being flushed.