Happy Labor Day everybody!
I want to start by saying a few words about the Vice President. Joe and I are both products of this great state. He is a friend, a brother, and a great champion of working men and women. It is an honor to be standing with him today.
Vice President Biden knows that Pittsburgh and Allegheny County are leading America toward the future with one word: Organize!
I want to thank every worker here who organized to form a union. You stood up for yourself. You stood up for your coworkers. You stood up for your community. You stood up for America.
You’re helping America today, right here, by organizing at Allegheny General Hospital and Allegheny County Community College and Point Park. You’re doing it in education and on the river boats and among security guards. You’re doing it with AFT and SEIU and the Operating Engineers and the Steelworkers and Unite HERE and the Carpenters.
When we organize, we’re working for a better life. A better life that starts with raising wages. We want raising wages and everything that comes with it. Good pay, great benefits, fair schedules, paid sick leave and a voice on the job. We know the best way to raise wages is to organize. The best ladder to the middle class is a collective bargaining agreement.
Pittsburgh has a powerful history of collective action and a powerful future. You’re building that future. How? It’s simple: Organize! Organize! Organize!
Once we organize, we bargain. I know many of you are in the middle of tough negotiations. Whether you are reaching your first contract or looking for a better one, now is the time to stick together. Now is the time to stand together. Now is the time to march together.
We’ll stand up. We’ll march. We’ll raise our voices. The CEOs, and none more than the CEOs of US Steel and ATI, want us to sit down and shut up. They want us to sit back and shove off.
But we’re not going to sit down or back up, and we sure as hell won’t shut up…. We’ll fight US Steel and ATI and anyone else who stands in our way, because we’re the American labor movement, and we won’t be denied!
We’ll march together. We’ll stand together. We’ll register together. We’ll vote together. And then we’ll win together! We’ll win together!