Political Quotes

“now, one final matter, by the end of today, the Senate will confirm two nominees on the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board: Gwynne Wilcox and David Prouty. Both are champions for working Americans. Ms. Wilcox, who hails from my home State of New York--I am proud to say--has spent her career representing workers and unions seeking to exercise their rights to organize. She is one of the Nation's leading experts on labor law, and if confirmed, she would make history as the first African-American woman to ever serve on the NLRB. Like Ms. Wilcox, David Prouty has also spent a lifetime defending the rights of organized labor across the country, recently serving as the general counsel of the SEIU, one the Nation's largest unions. Over the course of American history, the labor movement has been the single most powerful force in lifting Americans out of poverty and into the middle class. It was by coming to this country and joining a union that my grandfather entered the middle class and passed on even more opportunity to his children and then to me and my brother and sister. So it is no mistake that as labor union participation has declined over the past few decades, wages have stalled as well, and folks are finding it harder and harder to stay in the middle class.…”