Political Quotes

“I hope my colleagues will join me, as I know the Senator from Michigan, the Presiding Officer, does, in standing in solidarity with thousands of UAW workers in Ohio and Michigan and around the country who demand that automakers--a simple demand really--respect the work they do to make these companies successful. There is still time, the rest of the day and, really, beyond this, for the Big Three to avert a strike, which we know is always a last resort for workers. My wife is the daughter of a utility worker in Ashtabula, in the far northeast corner of the State. She, first of all, credits her dad's union card with saving her life. She was 16 years old and had an asthma attack, I believe at school, and was picked up in an ambulance and taken to the Cleveland Clinic and spent more than a week there-- something she could not afford without her dad's union card and her dad's healthcare benefits from the utility workers union and from that company. She also said that, twice during her growing up, the union struck because their backs were against the wall; they thought they had no choice. She acknowledges that the workers never really recover the lost wages from a strike. These UAW members in Michigan and Ohio, in Toledo, in Cincinnati, in Dayton, and all over our State and in other States, they want to be on the job. They don't want to strike. They don't want to be on the picket line.…”