Political Quotes

“Thank you, Congresswoman Christensen. I'm here today because I look at the fight and the struggle of the workers in Wisconsin, the public sector workers, as connected, the dots connected to the struggles of workers across this country. For 20 years we've seen an erosion of the organized labor force, the organized workforce. And it isn't just the private sector workers who have lost over these 20 years. It's also our public sector workers. And this is the fight in which we're engaged now, Mr. Speaker. The union movement and collective bargaining have brought us minimum wages, not for our organized workers, but for those of us who are not organized, have brought us decent workplaces, safe working conditions, health care insurance, disability, vacation, family and medical leave, and the list goes on and on. And so I want to step back in our history a little bit, Mr. Speaker, and take a look at what has happened to the organized workforce--jobs shipped outside this country for private sector workers, a depletion of the organized workforce. We've also seen a circumstance where our State and municipal employees have done everything that we've asked them to do even in a tough economy in saying that they will make concessions, as all workers have in this economy, because they believe in holding the line for all of their workers so that people will not have to lose jobs. But they've taken furloughs, they've taken pay freezes, they've taken cuts in benefits.…”