Barack Obama's Remarks to the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.myfoxspokane.com/myfox/pages/News/Politics/Detail?contentId=6215575&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.14.1

Created: Friday, 04 Apr 2008, 1:50 AM GMT

We meet here at a time of challenge and uncertainty for America's workers. We all know the stories of shuttered plants and rusting factories, of industrial centers that have become near-ghost towns across this state, and across this country.

But today's gathering isn't the first time workers have met in Philadelphia at a pivotal moment. One hundred and eighty-one years ago, in the fall of 1827, a group of mechanics met in the shadow of Independence Hall to form what they called the Mechanics Union of Trade Associations - a moment that marked the birth of the trade union movement in America.

They met all kinds of resistance from employers and wealthy merchants who said what they were trying to do would hurt workers and business, and was just plain un-American. But these mechanics - these founding fathers of organized labor - disagreed. And in the preamble to their constitution, they proposed what many believed was a radical idea - that it was in their employers' interests to pay them higher wages because higher wages for workers would help bring general prosperity for all.

It was the 19th century equivalent of the idea that what's good for Main Street is good for Wall Street. And that's an idea we need to remember today. Because what we're seeing is that another, very different view has taken hold in Washington and on Wall Street - the view that we can somehow thrive as a nation when those at the very top are doing better than ever, while ordinary Americans are struggling to get by.

Over the last seven years, we've had an administration that serves the interests of the wealthy and the well-connected, no matter what the cost to working families, and to our economy. It's an administration that didn't lift a finger while our economy rolled toward recession until the pain folks were feeling on Main Street trickled up to their friends on Wall Street.

It's an administration that's been handing out tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans who don't need them and aren't even asking for them.


FULL story at link.