I say let's go back to a truer use of the word 'freedom.' Let's start with President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. I would add the freedom to bargain collectively. Those freedoms are under attack today.
Richard TrumkaYou can be dogmatic, like Donald Trump, and say don't tell me any of the facts, I have made up my mind, I don't want to hear anything, or you can say, look, trade can be good or it can be bad, depending on the rules.
Richard TrumkaBetter world. Better life for everybody, every worker. Poor kids oughta be able to go anyplace their brains will take them. Not where Daddy or Mommy's pocketbooks can send them. Everybody oughta have health care, everybody oughta have some retirement security, every American. Every one. Everybody oughta have a decent good job. That's what I believe in, and that's what I fight every day to try to achieve.
Richard TrumkaThe bottom has fallen out of America's wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us.
Richard TrumkaIn the past we couldn't talk to non-union workers. Now we can at least talk to non-union workers so we'll be mobilizing them and educating them not for just six or eight months before an election, but we'll be doing it year-round.
Richard TrumkaWe have a raising wages agenda. And that includes tax policy, trade policy. TPP is a very bad agreement. Covers 40 percent of the world's economy, and it will cost us jobs. It's not well-drafted. It's an agreement, an investment agreement that will benefit Wall Street a lot, but not working people.
Richard Trumka