to 2.6 feet by the end of the century. .. is about is how we put some of the dirtiest oil in the world and more carbon emissions into the atmosphere. and i suspect that our kids and our grandchildren will look back on this period and say what world were you living in? why did you do that to us? mr. president, it would seem to me that what we should be debating here is how we impose a tax on carbon so that we can break our dependence on fossil

fuel. that's what we should be >> that is what we should be discussing. not how we increase carbon emissions. we should be discussing what kind of legislation will move us aggressively toward energy efficiency, weatherization and such sustainable energies as wind solar and geotherm'al. we should be having a debate about legislation which makes our trancesportation system more efficient and get cars and trucks off the road. we should be having the debate about how we are going to get automobiles that run on

electricity and make them less expensive and how to get cars running on 80-100 miles per hour. we should not be talking about transporting the dirtiest oil on the planet. mr. president, in my view the united states congress in a very profound way should not be in the business of rejecting science. when we reject science, we become the laughing stocks of the world. how do we get forward and prepare legislation if is not based on scientific evidence and to say the overwhelming majority of scientist we are ignoring what you are telling us and move

in the wrong direction i think makes us look like fools in front of the entire world. how do we go forward and tell china, russia and india and countries around the world that climate change is a huge crisis around the planet at the same time as we facilitate the construction of the keystone xl pipeline. mr. president, i am delighted the president will veto this legislation, if it happens to pass the congress. our job now is not to bring more carbon into the atmosphere. it is to transform our energy system away from coal away from oil, away from fossil fuel into energy efishficiency and

sustainable energy. that should be the direction of the country and we should lead the world in that way. with that mr. president, i will yield the floor and note the absence of the quorem. >> the new senate majority leader talks about the republican's agenda and president obama visit as ford assembly plant in wayne, michigan. a summit was held in washington, d.c. on workers wages. it included remarks by thomas perez and elizabeth warren and discussions about collective bargaining, minimum wage and income inequality. this is three hours and 20 minutes. >> good morning.

if everybody could police take their seats we will get started. i am marybe and i am secretary treasurer of the north carolina afo-cio, welcome! [applause] >> welcome to the afl-cio's first ever national summit on raising wages. to all of you who have joined us in person or over the livestream, thank you for participating. i will expect many more people joining us and trickling in so please make them welcome. i want to thank galludet university for hosting us today. inequality has become the de defining economic story of our generation. worker's productivity is going

up but our wages are remaining flat. here in the richest country in the world, we have bank tellers who count money all day, but have not a dollar of their own to save. grocery clerks who stock shelves full of food but have nothing to feed their families. construction workers who build houses but have no home to call their own. it is no accident workers have struggling. lawmakers have deliberately created policies that have drib n down wages, undermined our bargaining power and weakened or safety net. inequality didn't just happen. it is the result of deliberate policy choices by our lawmakers. it is not random.

and it is not inevitable. there is a simple fix to ine inequality and it isn't rocket science. raise workers wages! [applause] >> brothers and sisters, if we did that, if we paid workers a living wage consumer spending would increase and the need for public assistance would decrease. if working folks got their fair share, our economy would work for everyone. today is about changing the narrative. it is about shifting the debate. instead of asking how much it will cost to pay workers more we should be asking how much it will cost if we don't. from the pope to the president, from standard and poor to

morgan stanley, there is growing agreement that inequality hurts our people and our economy. so let's do something about it. today -- today is about solutions and seizing the historic moment and forging a future where all workers have good jobs and living wages. and we mean all workers. labors and professionals, native-born and immigrant, men and women, from new york to california to my home state of north carolina and all through the south -- we will fight for policy changes. we will hold politicians accountable and we will win fair wages for all workers no matter what they do or where they live.

today -- [applause] >> today brothers and sisters, it is about action and the power we have to change our economic policy. just look around you. we have an overflowing crowd and overflow room of over 360 people we have top-ranking clergy elected officials, community leaders, policy experts, we are building a movement here and we want you to be part of the movement. help us raise wages. help us today by asking people to join the round table, help us expand this conversation by tweeting throughout the day using the hash tag raising

wages. and for those of who who are joining us in person, we invite you to lunch afterward in the ball ball ball ballroom so we can fellowship and continue this important conversation. brothers and sisters, the change is ours. we can change the issues facing our country. to begin, we will hear from works about their struggles in this low-wage economy. it doesn't matter if someone is a fast-food sever a brick mason, or a college instructor. workers across the spectrum are working harder and harder for less and less. our next two speakers know that all too well.

our first speaker is a public school counselor in detroit and a member of the american federation of teachers. she is followed by ms. walker a papa johns working in new york and a member of the fast food fighters for 2015. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our guest. >> good morning. my name is laquia wilson and i am a native of detroit, michigan. i have worked hard to achieve the american dream. after high school i earn ad degree in elementary education and taught first grade for five

years. i am an educator it is what i do and i love my work. i wanted to raise myself up further and pursue a passion of mine which is counseling. that is why i went back to school and earned a counseling degree for my masters. i picked up a second job as an adjunct faculty member at a community college to purchase a home. i purchased the home in 2004 and then the college cut the adjunct staff. unfortunately for me i lost the extra income. the income i needed for the american dream. i lost my home and i was foreclosed on. i was able to buy it back but loosing your house is a horrible

experience. i had to cash out my retirement my credit is shot, and it is embarrassing. i am not here for pity or for a handout. i worked hard to be successful and i have so much education, but to do that and still be struggling? my mother was a teacher, and when she retired he she was making $65,000 a year 20 years ago. i am making $65,000 right now but my cost are not the same as her's. all of our cost go up and up and up. i have something else to say too. i have so much respect for the walmart workers and the fast-food workers. i have watched them demand more and i am proud of the work they do and continue to do.

yet, i don't want to forget the workers who spent time and money on education, who did everything possible to be well-equipped for a good job, make it to the middle class, and have the american dream become a reality. raise worker's wages. that is why i am here at the summit to raise wages. [applause] >> hello, brothers and sisters. i am shantel walker and i worked at papa johns for more than ten years. i make pizza, answer the phones and do it all. we all do a good job. me and coworkers throughout the country.

but the subject at hand is raising the minimum wage. and not raising the minimum wage, make a living wage. raising wages completely. [applause] >> everything we are going through as workers is hard. i live this every single day. we have to do more than make sure there is justice across the work place in new york across the country and around the world. when i was younger i wanted to be a fiber optic technician with computers and it didn't turn out that way. i started working and working. when i started at papa johns it was just another job until something happened. i saw co-workers not getting paid. at the time my boss never put them on the clock and they said they never worked for them.

this one worker, he was a teenager, it made me upset. but i am proud to say we took things to the next level. we had action in my store the whole community came out. i want to say 100-80 people came, we spoke to the managers and retrieved the money for the worker. [applause] >> and that was a big step for us. that was a big step for me. that was the beginning. i feel like my eyes are open now. it is wrong to steal wages from workers. i want to stand with them and not condone this type of behavior because it is wrong and it is illegal. that is why i am doing what i am doing to raise the wage in

america and this is why we are here now. this is why we do what we do every day. not some days. every single day. to ensure that people in america have a fair shot at society and to make our lives better and make our communities better and to make our country better. i want everyone in america to fall in love with the bigger picture and with that idea that we can do better and we can be better and we can be productive people out here. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, that is what america is built upon. this is why we are here. this is our idea of -- this is what democracy looks like. this is why we have a society that we have. now is the time to stop the poverty wages in america.

raise the wage! [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you both for telling us your personal stories and inspiring us we can do better. workers like these two are fed up and standing up not just for themselves but for all workers. they are standing up because working folks need a raise and we need policymakers who will make it happen. we are fortunate to have one of those policy makes in our secretary labor. secretary thomas perez doesn't just talk about raising wages he takes action.

he has helped imelement a minimum wage increase for hundreds of thousands of government contract workers. and he helped expand minimum wage and overtime protection for over two million home care workers and currently he is seeking to update federal overtime rules to include up to six million more workers. from showing employers how they can raise wage and improve their bottom line to extolling the benefits of collective bargaining, secretary perez is an advocate for workers everywhere. brothers and sisters, please welcome, a leading voice in the fight for raise wages, our secretary of labor, thomas perez! [applause]

>> morning. how are you doing? hey. [applause] >> how is everyone doing? i love to be here. this is one of my favorite universities and this is a wonderful venue with wonderful friends. rich, it has been hours. long time no see. i met shantel in new york city when we were with mayor bill de blasio advocating for working families. i come here with a sense of optimism, determination and a sense of the knowledge of unfinished business. you listen to people like shantel and lisa and we talk

data but this is about real people. and the strokesles you are going through. this is about who we are as americans. this is about who we are as a nation. there is a guy named jim wallace who does an exercise with students and asks them to take the bible and rip up every page

that has a need to help the poor and underserved. the bible turns into a newsweek magazine. this is about who we are as a nation. i come here as i said first of all thank you to rich and the friends here you have been at the tip of the spear. you continue to give voice; the labor movement continues to give voice; faith communities continue to give voice; people in the frontlines, you are saying papa johns give me some love here and that is important. this president was a community organizer and continues to be a community organizers. he understands that change comes from the bottom up. i am so excited to be here with you and i am equally excited to be travelling in a few hours with the president to detroit. we will talk about where we have

been and where we are and where we need to go. that is what today is about. it is important for us. i come here with a sense of optimism because i remember where we were. the three months before the president took office the country shed two million jobs and our 401-k became 201-ks for those that had them and many didn't have them. the housing crisis -- the bubble bursted and the american dream was transformed into the american nightmare. we saw people suffering everywhere. and now fast forward and we have had 55 consecutive months of private jobs growth and last month was the best best month. the auto industry is going gang busters. some folks didn't want to get on the auto industry or american

working. they said let it go. remember the election in 2012 there was a candidate who said there was a jeep plant in ohio that was going to be shipping jobs to china? guess what? that jeep plant has added 15,000 jobs in the last year and a half. [applause] >> and guess what? a lot of things are being shipped overseas. it is the product we are making because we are exporting and insourcing and the new way and outsourcing is yesterday's word. that is why the president is going to be at ford auto company. the average assembly line worker is working 42 hours a week. the economy is coming back auto sales are up construction jobs are coming back i see people every day -- people like

catherine hagget who introduced the president at an event highlighting the plight of the unemployee unemployeed. catherine did everything right, played by the rules, single mother of two and both of her kids are in the military one in special forces. she walked into work and was told her services were no longer needed. she lost her job and dignity and it to wear a coat in her house because she had to turn the heat down to make ends meet. you fast forward to a couple months ago, i was with the governor in connecticut and we visit her at her job and she punched her ticket to the middle class as a result of her resilience. we are moving into the right direction. 57 consecutive months. this past year will be the best

month of private sector job growth we have seen since the late '90s. we are moving in the right direction but today is about the unfinished business of this recovery and that is to make sure that this recovery results in shared prosperity because we live in a nation that is a community and we don't believe that if you blow out your neighbor's candle that will make your candle shine brighter but yet so many appear to adopt that policy and believe in the politics of i take from you and you take nothing. we can have an economy of shared prosperity. you led the economy into shared prosperity. the labor movement was about leading the economy for decade into a nation of shared prosperity where everybody that worked hard and played pie the rules could realize the american

dream and that is the unfinished business of what we are doing today. that is why i am so excited to be here with you. over a year ago the unemploymentry was 7% and now we are down to 5.8%. very few people predicted that progress but we have made that progress and continue to move in the right direction. but again, we see and hear your voice shantel, leon and lisa. we hear your struggles. america works best when we field the whole team but too many people are on had sidelines saying i want to the game too many people working hard and haven't seen a raise in years, this isn't a phenomenon of the last few years, this is a phenomenon of decades. you look at productty since

1979. it is up over 90% but wages have gone up 2-3 percent. the american workers helped bake the cake of prosperity but are not sharing in the fruits of that prosperity. prosperity was to be shared and it isn't the choice of i either take care of my shareholder or my worker -- you can do both. the ford motor company proves that. in lewisville kentucky in 2008 they had a crisis and were not sure they would survive. they were down to 700 employees and now they are up to 4,000 and growing. how did they do it? shared sacrifice leading to shared prosperity. the uaw, ford leadership working

together saying we are all in this together, we all succeed when we all succeed but we all succeed only when we all succeed and that pathway to prosperity has led ford back led the other american automakers back and it has led countless other businesses that i meet day in and day out. and that is why i come to you with a sense of optimism. i see people in the labor movement who get it and i see business leaders that understand my most precious asset is my worker and when i treat my worker fairly my worker rewards be sticking around and being productee productee productee productee. i hear most i need consumption. and whu look at the data and you see inflation and spending from

the folks in the top 5% has increased 15% and you look at inflation adjusted spending of the other 95% and it increased about 1%. why? because of the reason we are here today. wages have been flat. prosperity hasn't been shared. false choices have been the order of the day all too frequently. we cannot do this. we cannot wage your wages. it is a structural problem. i reject that idea. low wages are a choice. they are not a necessity. zero benefits are a choice not a necessity and this president stand for the proposition that everybody who works hard and plays by the rules should be able to share in that prosperity and that is the unfinished business of this recovery;

ensuring our prosperity is broad-based and widely shared. how do we build that pathway to shared prosperity? we build it by making sure we have every step in the staircase and it starts with taking every effort we can to lift the wages. as it starts with the minimum wage. no body who work as full-time job should have to live in poverty. that was the proposition of the fair standard labor act that fdr signed 76 years ago. at the time he signed the fair labor standards act there were what he called a number of calamity callers, folks who said if you establish a minimum wage it would be the end of the world as we know it. it would be -- our nation would

go to heck in a hand basket. it was remarkable to hear some of the things that were said -- businesses said it would be a dictator dictatorship if we had a minimum wage. that is a quote. in 1892 a few years earlier there was a trade journal called manufacture and builder and they railed against a ratical notion that an eight -- radical -- hour work day would be as vicious a piece of demigod that could be conceived. it is important to remind folks that the labor movement brought us the 40 hour workweek. you ought to give yourselves a hand. there appear to be a few folks who believe the 40 hour workweek as a thing of the past and is no longer an entitlement.

there are a number of people who believe there are apparently a difference in working a 40 hour job and getting your food at the food pantry. that is not who we are as a nation. i meet people week in and week out that do this. i have sat with fast-food workers and heard stories that break my heart. this is not the america that we should be. i heard from oneworker who said i was so sick i could not go into work at a fast-food restaurant -- and by the way, when your server is sick, i want you to stay home. but his employer said you are fired unless you bring in a doctor's note and he said how can i afford to go the doctor? those are not my stories.

i hear these all over. a story about a janitor who has been working for 30 years a union organizers and makes only $9 an hour. she should why can't i get access to insurance and i said if your governor signed the medicare expansion you would have health insurance now. why do people wake up every day thinking if i only some need insurance? that is not who we are as a nation. 20 states saw an increase in the minimum wage. but you should not have to win the lottery in terms of location to fete a raise. that is why this president will work to relentlessly increase the minimum wage because as i

said there is no dignity in working a 40 hour workweek and going to the food pantry to get your food. we will continue to work overtime to put in place overtime regulations because when i was a kid growing up in buffalo, new york, if you told me my friend's parents were a manager, that meant they were in the middle class. but you have managers working 60-70 hours a week making as little as $450 a week. we have cases where the managers are making worse than the workers. that is about $23-$24,000 a year. you cannot survive on that. and that is why the president directed us to revise the overtime regulation and we will do just that. making sure that people have a decent standard of living is exactly a critical reason why the president did what he did on immigration in december.

there is no substitute for comprehensive immigration reform and you precappreciated the leadership. this is a bipartisan issue and one of my regrets from the last congress is if this bipartisan senate bill had come to a vote in the house it would have passed and this would be in the rear view mirror. you saw the results of the four red states -- beet red states -- overwhelming passed state ain addition -- state initiatives to increase the minimum wage.

every president except two minus fdr signed wavers to increase minimum wage. we have to keep fighting and can't give up. i saw the movie cell last week and they didn't give up. we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of bloody sunday. you never give up. and we all know that. the labor movement knows that. that is why we will keep moving and we have more work to fortify the staircase to prosperity. it isn't simple minimum wage, overtime, or immigration reform but it is making sure for instance we enforce laws that are on the book because you know what, what i have seen in this job both at a federal level and a state level is that wage theft remains a rampant problem across america. we just commissioned a study that looked at wage and hour violations in two states;

california and new york. and in these two states we saw wage an hour violations primarily targets low-wage workers, that amounted in two states to over one billion a year. and for many of these victims, they were loosing 40% of their already meager wages. 40%. and so if you wonder why elections matter laws are only as good as the political will of the people enforcing them. the wage an hour division in the prior administration reached an agreement with a large retailer in which it would give it notice prior to entering the facility to conduct child labor investigations. now, i used to be a prosecutor, okay? and i don't think it is the best practice to announce to drug dealers i will be at the corner

of 4th and f on friday conducting drug investigations. i don't think that is the best practice if your goal is to address drug-related misconduct. and i don't think it is a good idea in this context either. and that is why as we build this stairway to shared prosperity we need to make sure we fortify the enforcement step because it is so critically important. people are not making enough to begin with and all too many people are not receiving the money they have earned as a result of wage theft. and that is why we continue to work on this issue and work on the issue of misclassification. you know workers, a big part of the challenge of wage stagnation is the changing nature of what we call an employee.

i meet so many workers who are called independent contractors and why does that happen? in many cases it is permisible but in too many cases they are called this so they don't have to pay them. we have work as the victim employers who play by the rules -- i meet employers who say i don't cheat but my competitor is so i cannot compete. and the tax collect senior the victim. we didn't call this anything else. we called this workplace fraud because that is what it is. [applause] >> as we build this staircase to shared prosperity we need to make sure we fortify that and

you need to be holding whoever has my job accountable to make sure that people who are working an honest day's work get paid their wages. and we need to make sure as we have the wage stagnation and talk about how people like so many people in this room who are working hard, can get the wages they deserve, we need to make sure the frame is expanded so it isn't simply fair wages. it is benefits as well. i have travelled to australia, canada germany, and the uk in the last few months and what those nations have in common and what every other nation on the plant except pap sonia new guinea have in common is they have some form of paid leave. when you give birth to your child or are taking care of your parent who is very ill you

should not have to make a choice between the jobs that you need and the family that you love. yet we are so behind the rest of the world in this area because we have not gotten into the 21st century on paid leave. i met a guy in germany, when i met with the german chamber of commerce, he works in germany and he said to me tom, i would never come back, at least in the near future because my wife and i are taking a year off to care for our child. we believe the most important family value is the value of time spent with their family. i asked every business in that place, if you had the ability to water down or repeal your paid leave laws would you do so and i got two answers. one word answer was no. the two word answer i cannot

decribe because i see people of cloth in this room. and they understand it because it isn't simply the moral and ethical thing to do it is in the enlightened self interest of the economies that want to thrive. look at labor force participation of women in the united states and canada. about 15 years ago, women from 25-54 were identical and now you fastforward to today and women in candidate about 7.5 higher than the united states. that translates to something like 5.5 million more women would be in the workplace if we had kept pace with canada. i talk to employers there, including global employers with a united states footprint, who figured out how to comply with paid leave laws in canada germany, uk and they are thriving saying it is part of

their competitiveness. as we have the conversation let's not settle for 10.10. let's talk about benefits scheduling and all of the things that keep us up at night. this is about the dignity of work and that also includes when your son can't go to school because he is sick you should not have to put him on the bus. i talk to school bus drivers and they tell me i see that mom at the bus stop with her son and daughter and the mom is crying and i know exactly what is going on. mom is putting a sick kid on the bus because mom has no other choice. when women succeed, america succeed. and that is why this president, you will hear a lot from him about paid leave. you will hear from him about wanly wage fairness and about

the need to make sure that we lift up worker voice. because i think one of the most important steps in this stairway to shared prosperity is the issue of worker voice. you know i have such admiration for the people in the front row and the people in this room because you fought for folks. i used to work for a guy named senator kennedy and it isn't a coincidence -- i read the book "the greatest generation" and what is interesting about the book -- and i don't read notes well so i apologize to the speech writers. america's great generation was remarkable people. and it is remarkable not only what they did during the war but after the war. they helped to grow the labor

movement and they understood the word collective bargaining meant that we could work for our collective good. they understood that there are no such things as false choices. that businesses don't have to chose between workers and shareholders. we can do both. it isn't a coincidence in the ensuing decades that we saw rising rising wages. this is why i spent time at volkewagon. they understand they succeed in partnership with their workers not at the expense of their workers. ford motor company understands that we succeed in partnership with our workers not at the expense of our workers.

rich trump understand that we succeed and all succeed when we all succeed. we are building communities and teachers are all about making sure that we have -- we being teachers student and parents -- all have the tools to succeed. we are all in this together. we see examples of employers, union unions and other worker organizations, rather it is folks organizing domestic workers, cab drivers, lending voice. and we see faith communities and responsible businesses saying i am there with you. and if we are going to continue success in lifting up wages this is the area where we have to redouble our efforts making sure that we have voice,

understanding history and the history is that when we work together collectively, we all succeed and i come to you and leave you with the same sense of optimism i walked in. i have a great job. i feel like the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. this president gets it. he is a community organizers at his core. and he understands that change comes from the bottom up not from the top down and that is why he is here in spirit and in his values and that is why we understand that the ark of the moral universe bends toward justice and bends toward people who expand opportunity for everyone. not people that muzzle voices or people that believe if you blow out your neighbor's candle yours

will shine brighter. we are celebrating martin luther king day in a dupcouple weeks. we are not celebrating george wal wallace day. the labor movement was side by side with dr. king in that effort. that is why i am so optimisty. there are days you say where do we go? but we have the facts and the american people on our side and so many folks who understand we all succeed when we all succeed. as a result i am confidant we will translate and transform some of the headwins out there into a tail win of inclusion and

opportunity and a tail wind of shared prosperity. the ark of the moral universe bends toward justice but it doesn't bend on its own. today's conference is about all being part of the bending. dr. king said we will live to rule the day of the ax of people like jim conner but the appalling silence of good people. we cannot be silent in the face of this remarkable challenge of enjoying shared prosperity. we can do this. the difference between the late '90s and the prosperity we saw then and the prosperity we are beginning to see now is that prosperity of the late '90s was shared prosperity and we need to make sure the prosperity of today also becomes shared prosperity. we can do that.

low wages are not structural or inevitable. they are choices. and there are remarkable business leaders out there, remarkable union leaders out there, remarkable faith leaders out there, and remarkable workers out there doing this for everybody and building an american that works for all and making sure the stairway is fortified and i am confidant we will prevail just as dr. king prevailed. it will not be easy. it will not bend on its own. but with all of the people in the room and the millions of folks we meet in our travels i am confidant the story of success that we see will be the stories of success for everyone. have a great day. and let's keep it up. you need to hold us accountable. you need to tell us what we should be doing and we will work together. there are so many people in this room.

business leaders, faith leaders, labor leaders, activist who are moving forward and i am confidant we will get there. have a great conference and thank you for shining a light on this and thank you for all you do. [applause] >> a round of applause for secretary perez! [applause] >> as secretary perez said we are here today because we are optimistic. we know we can do this. we know that when workers do well we all do well. next we are going to hear from two workers who will talk about how much better our communities

and economy would be if more workers have opportunities to learn and advance and provide better lives for themselves and their families. our first speaker will be lisa henson, a correction officer in maryland and a member of the american federation of state, county and muinousple employees. she is followed by leon speller, an electrician here and a member of the local brotherhood 26. please welcome lisa and leon to the stage. [applause] >> good morning. my name is lisa henson.

i am a correctional officer. a sergeant. this has been my job for 20 years. the job i do goes unnoticed. it is a dangerous job. but it is also a very important job. we assist and provide inmates to go back into society and be productive. we have a simple mantra about the work we do: fair firm, and impartial. the public depends on workers like me to make sure the correctional rules are enforced for the inmate, the staff and the public. i always try to conduct myself as a professional. i try to think of each inmate as a person as a human being who deserves decent treatment and

dig dignity. some of these inmates come from broken homes, some don't come from homes at all and have raised themselves. that is why i don't look at the crimes they commit. it helps me to look at them as an individual. it helps me to provide the services i need to provide. i am here at the raising wages summit because wages are too low. people want a way out. people want to provide for their families members. people will provide if they can. if they can't, our communities fall apart. that is how we get young people growing up in broken homes or raising themselves. it is a cycle that we need to break. raise the wages. thank you. [applause]

>> good morning everyone. thank you for being here. my name is leon speller and i am an electrician. i grew up in the washington, d.c. area and had a typical childhood. i graduated and was accepted to pennsylvania state university and i attended for one year. when i came home that year i had a son and later two daughters. i was only 19 years old. i knew my family would not feed itself so it was up to me. i left school and got a job as a courtesy clerk at saveway. you don't hear of too many other jobs besides being a teacher, firefighter or doctor. i was lost. i learnanded a job working at lowes.

it paid more than safe way. sometimes you see a light and climb through hoping your light son the other side. got a job later contracting and it introduced me to the electal world. i found about about an aprintanceship program that offers on the job and in-class training. i don't know many jobs where you can get a paycheck for working weekly and getting paid to go to school. we need more programs like this. when i wake up in the morning, i knew this is what i want to do. i am proud to be analect electrician and i can take care and provide for my family. i am hear at raising wages summit because i want everyone

to know when t does feel when when you raise wages and you can take care of your family and loved ones. thank you. [applause] >> thank you lisa and leon. as you heard from workers this morning something has to change and it needs to happen now. enough is enough. that is what senator elizabeth warren said so lovely at a recent speech on the senate floor and what she says enough every chance. enough of the corporate greed that is wrecking this country. [applause] >> elizabeth warren speaks truth to power. she always has and we know she always will. that is the thing people love

about her. there is no question where she stands. senator warren does not waver, she doesn't back down, she doesn't check poll numbers and donor list before taking a stand. [applause] >> it doesn't matter where she is or whom she is talking to. everywhere, every time she stands up to corporate greed. she gives voice to the concerns of we the people and she challenges all of us to do better. ...

>> i want to thank you for your good counsel and also for your friendship. thank you. thank you. and i also want to thank my friends for massachusetts. steve was supposed to be here today and i have to say that the guys from massachusetts made it happen. thank you so much and i love being here with my labor friends and i'm so glad to have this chance to be here at the first-ever national summit on wages. and today we have spotlighted an economic issue that is central to understanding what is happening to people all over this country. and i recently read an article and political called everything

is awesome and unemployment under 6% now, a new all-time high, the dow jones, low-inflation. it is just like the headline. and it has been repeated several times and on many different measures the economy has improved and continues to improve and i think the president and his team did deserve credit for the steps they have taken. they have done such a good job. [applause] but i spent most of my career studying what has happened to america's middle class. and i know that there are four widely cited statistics that give an important snapshot of

the health of the overall economy in the overall picture doesn't tell much about what is happening at the ground level to tens of millions of americans. despite these cheery numbers america's middle class is in deep trouble. so if you think about it this way. the stock market, if you have money and and a mutual fund, if you and your husband or wife are both working full-time with kids in school and you are among the half or so of all americans who do not have any money in stocks, how does the booming stock market help you? profits and gdp are up. but if you work at wal-mart and you are paid so little and we need food stamps to put groceries on the table, it puts more money in stockholders

pockets and an uptick in the gdp and what does it do for you? i know people that still can't find full-time work or they have given up because you cannot find a job to replace the one that you had. you are counted as part of the drop in unemployment. but how much is your economic situation improving? and inflation rates are still low. but if you are young and starting off life with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt unable to find a good job to save money to buy a house how are you benefiting from inflation? so there are a lot of broad national statistics that say our economy is getting better and our overall economy is recovering from the crash of 2008. but there have been deep structural changes in the economy that have gone on for more than 30 years and changes

that have cut out hard-working middle-class families from sharing in the overall growth. it wasn't always this way. coming out of the great depression, america built a middle-class unlike anything on earth. from the 1930s to the late 1970s as gdp went up wages went up pretty much across the board and in fact 90% of all workers, everyone outside the top 10% got about 70% of all the new income growth and sure the richest 10% off a more than their share and they got dirty%. but overall as the economic pie got bigger, pretty much everyone was getting a little bit more. and in other words as our economy and country got bigger

and our families got bigger and our country got richer. and that is how we built a great middle class in america. [applause] but by the 1980s we just had flattened. while expenses kept going up. this leaves was terrible. by the early 2000 families were spending twice as much adjusted for inflation on mortgages as they had a generation earlier. they spend more on health insurance and to send their kids to college, moms and dads both went to work and that meant new expenses like childcare and the cost of a second car all over the country people tightened their belts where they could but it still hasn't been enough to save them. families have gone deep into debt to pay for college and to

cover serious medical problems just to try to stay afloat a little while longer. and today's young adults may be the first generation in american history to do worse than its parents dead. and remember how up until 1980 from 1935 to 1980 90% of the people, middle class working folks, the poor they got about 70% of all new income that was created in this economy in the top 10% of the rest. well since 1980 guess how much of the growth in income over the last 32 years how much of the growth in income to the 90% debt. zero. none and nothing. it is worse than that. the average family not in the

top 10% makes less money today than they were making a generation ago. so who got all of the increase in income over the last 32 years? 100% of it went to the top 10% in all of the new money earned in this economy over the past generation. all of that growth in the gdp went to the top. all of it did. that is a huge structural change in this country and when i look at the data here and this includes years of research that i conducted myself, i see the evidence everywhere of the pounding that working people are taking. instead of building an economy for all americans, for the past generation this country has grown an economy that works for some americans. the tens of millions of working

families who are the backbone of this country, this economy isn't working. these families are working harder than ever but they can't get ahead. opportunity is slipping away. many feel like the game is rigged against them and they are right. the game is rigged against them. since the 1980s too many people running this country have followed one form or another of this or trickle-down economic theory. many in washington today still support it. when all of the varnish is removed, trickle-down just means helping the biggest corporation in the richest people in this country than claiming bad the big corporations and rich people can be counted upon to create an economy that would work for everyone else. don't get me wrong, it was

popular with the corporations and lobbyists. it never really made much sense. george bush senior called it voodoo economics and he was right. but let's call it for what it is. trickle down was nothing more than the politics of helping the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful and it cuts the legs out from underneath america's middle class. [applause] and trickle-down policies are actually pretty simple. not just cops on main street at the cops on wall street. be much the whole republican party and if we are going to be honest, too many democrats have talked about the evils of the government and call for deregulation and it all sounded good area and for what it was

really about was tying the hands of regulators and turning loose big banks and giant international corporations to do whatever they wanted to do. turning them loose to rig the market and reduce competition and turning them loose to outsource more jobs and to load up on more risks and then hide behind taxpayer guarantees turning them loose to sell more mortgages and credit to american families. in short turning them loose to do whatever short-term profits even if it came at the expense of working families. the trickle-down have a second part to it and that is for those at the top area and cut them when times are good and cut them when times are bad. that meant that there was less money for road repairs and medical research and less money for schools, our government

would need to squeeze kids on student loans and trickle-down advocates said so be it. and looking at the results in the top 10% got all of the growth over the past 30 years and all of it and the economy stopped working for everyone else. the trickle-down experiment that began field america's middle class and sure, the rich are doing great. giant corporations are doing great. lobbyists are doing great. but we need an economy where everyone else has a shot to do great. [applause] [applause] and the world has changed beneath america's working families speak. powerful working families like globalization and technology are creating shifts that are

altering employment patterns in putting new stresses on old structures and those changes could create new opportunities. or they can sweep away the last vestiges of economic security for 90% of american workers. and so too many politicians just look the other way. instead of wanting government to expand opportunity for 90% of americans and to shore up security in an increasingly uncertain world instead of rethinking economic policy to deal with tough new realities, the more than 30 years washington has far too often advanced policies that camera america's middle class even harder. take a look at the choices washington has made.

what has left america's working families in a deep hole and the choice to leash up the financial costs and in a recession to bail out the biggest banks with no strings attached. while family suffered. the choice to starve her schools and burden our kids with a hint of dollars of student loan debt while cutting taxes for billionaires. the choice has been her tax dollars to subsidize big oil instead of putting that into rebuilding roads and bridges and power grids. the choice is to look the other way when employers quit paying overtime. and that includes people's wages. [applause] [applause]

and the choice to find tax deals that let subsidize manufacturers around the globe cell here in america are good american shipped overseas. including those that favor those with money and power. and the consequence is that instead of an economy that works well for everyone, america now has an economy that works well for about 10% of the people. it wasn't always this way and it doesn't have to be this way. we can make new choices and we can make different choices, choices that the working people first and put us towards a better future and choices that reflect our deepest values. this is up to us and one way to

make those choices is to talk openly and honestly and to talk directly about work and how we value work and how we value those who do the work. we need to talk about what we believe and we believe that no one, no one should work full time and still live in poverty. and that means raising the minimum wage. [applause] [applause] >> we believe that workers have the right to come together to bargain together and to rebuild america's middle class. [applause] [applause] >> we believe in enforcing labor laws so that workers get overtime pay and pensions are fully funded. we believe in that. and we believe in equal pay for

equal work. [applause] and we believe that after a lifetime of work in person is entitled to retire with dignity. and that means protecting social security and protecting medicare and protecting our pensions. [applause] [applause] >> we don't make things better for workers if we don't get out and talk about work. but we also need to talk about jobs. about how we create jobs here in america and we need to talk about how we build the future and let's make it clear, we believe in making investments and that includes roads and bridges and education and

research investments that create good jobs in the short run and help us build new opportunities in the long run. we believe in that. [applause] and we believe in paying for them. not with magical accounting scams that pretend to cut taxes and raise revenues but with honest-to-goodness changes they make sure that everyone, including corporation, pays a fair share to build that future for all of us. [applause] and let's get ready for what is coming. we believe in trade policy and tax codes that will strengthen our economy and raise our standard of living and will create american jobs because we will never give up on these three words, made in america.

we believe in that. [applause] [cheers] [applause] and we need to talk about jobs and we need to talk about work. we need to talk about one things more and that is politics. if we are ever going to un- rig the system, then we need to make some important political changes. let me give you a place where we should start. we know that democracy does not work. we bow down to political power and that means that it is time to break out the wall street banks and remind politicians that they don't work for the big banks but they work for us. and that is what it is time for. [applause]

[applause] >> we know that these changes are possible. we know that they are possible because we have seen it come to life and we have seen the lobbyists and we have seen it throughout our history. we saw four and one the consumer financial protection bureau. [applause] >> we fought health care reform and we thought when president obama took important steps to reform our immigration system to executive order just a few weeks ago, that is what we know. >> this is personal. when i was 12 years old my three big brothers were in the

military my dad had a heart attack and it turned the family upside down. and i remember the day when my mother was scared. she put it on and walked to get a minimum wage job. that is a minimum wage job and that minimum wage job meant that we saved our family.

my mom kept working and we kept doing the best that we could. [applause] [applause] somehow i ended up in the united states senate. [applause] [applause] >> i tell that story because i believe. [inaudible]

>> this is an america that is building a future. [inaudible] and that is what we have to do here in america. [applause] [cheers] [applause] [cheers] [applause] [cheers] [applause] >> brothers and sisters thank you for joining us here today. [applause]

>> the american people are hungry for a message like you just heard. american workers are ready to share prosperity and we are ready to get to work and we are ready to raise the wages. coming up we are going to talk about how we do that. we have one of the most dynamic and diverse roundtables that you'll ever see. but before we get to that we are going to take a 15 minute break and we will be back here right at 10:45 p.m. do not be late because you don't want to miss this roundtable. and when you come back in get an index cards you can write on your us and for our experts. take a break and we will see you back here at 1045 gm. [inaudible conversations]

>> take a break so you will be right back here at 10:45 a.m. [applause] [inaudible] >> that's great thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome back, everyone. welcome back. [inaudible conversations] welcome back, everyone. if you could please take your seats. before the break senator warren laid out a bold vision of an america where there is share prosperity for everyone everywhere. this is about making that vision a reality. and this roundtable will be a discussion about how to do that.

and it will be a conversation. this is not your typical panel of talking heads. after all, it is not every day that you have workers or small business owners or a golden globe nominated actress and the mayor of a major city altogether on one panel. the diversity of this panel speaks to the breadth of the problem, inequality affects us all. and we are here today because all of us are committed to change. this promises to be a lively and interactive conversation and we want you to be part of it. please write on questions that you have on the index card and we will collect them later and we are also taking questions via twitter with the raising wages

hash tag. to tell us more about the roundtable in our participants, i'm going to turn it over to our moderator associate professor of political science and international public affairs at columbia university. please give it up for dorian. [applause] [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. >> good afternoon. >> i think that we have free copy. good afternoon, everyone. thank you for joining all of us. we are very excited to engage in this conversation on raising wages and we have a very diverse panel. i am not going to read the bios because we want to get right to the conversation and have this in your packets. but i do want to start off by saying a few things a somewhat we have heard this morning and then start the conversation.

first, i think it is appropriate to say we will be celebrating doctor king's birthday in a few weeks. and i strongly recommend that we recognize that he lost his life fighting for people in the south to have a better life and to have a voice that works. so if we could just take a moment to honor his life and legacy in the civil rights movement as well, i would appreciate it. thank you. also to remind you you can send a tweet at hash tag raising

wages and this includes questions from twitter and index cards. senator warren said a few things and obviously senator warren and i are not related but a few things that the senator said we know that corporate profits are up, corporations have seen record profits since world war ii and she mentioned since 1980 it has all gone to the top 10% and something really profound for me maybe i am middle aged on this panel. today's young adults. [applause]

>> today's young adults may be the first generation in american history to worsen their parents and that is very profound. so what and so what we are here to do is to talk about how we can recover the american dream and respond to the decades of wage denigration. it is true that many states did it new year's eve 20 states have raised the minimum wage. and given all that what the secretary of labor and the senator said i'm going to ask you to recon and trent respond to something, she said that washington makes choices and we have to look at the choices that washington has made and she gave one of the best explanations of

trickle-down economics that i have heard. she mentioned that there are many democrats who are part of that. so i think this can happen when times are good and when times are bad. so how should we think about those choices that washington has made that have gotten us into this mess. >> so i think this is absolutely right. there is a variety of policies and i would add to that that we have collective bargaining and we are fighting right now in so many states. we have to look at inequality and there are a variety of forces. but it is clear that this can be considered a weakness of workers

and one of the important things to point out is that there are things we can do and we have to look at other countries. we have to talk about technology and we have seen wages rise. there are a variety of things that we can do. along the lines of what senator warren talked about prospective and i think it's really critical and absolutely right. how many people are in washington in the country that are pessimistic and we have this in the united states that are just the way it is. and that is including other

countries that are doing things to raise the wages. companies recognizing that this means more customers and economist will talk about it as a demand problem. and that means people don't have enough money in their pockets, why don't they have enough money in their pockets? because their wages have been stagnant for decades. and one of the things that we put up there is one of the most analytical things that we have done, you demonstrate that there is a prototypical family they made $80000 in 2000, the same amount of money they are making now. so their wages are stagnant for

a decade. the cost of living and education, health care $5000 less today than they had a decade ago. they could buy less today than they did a decade ago. so if you wonder why people are mad and why we have this great statistic, people have concerns because they can do less today than they did a decade ago. and that is just not a failing of democratic politics that is economic as well. because we have a demand problem at the economic level. and it is in the interest of everyone. workers and leaders, the company

leaders, engaging in this strategy and we have shared prosperity. >> so to get to schertz prosperity, i want to get it the response is a business leader, i want to go to colby and jennifer first and asked the question because we know the problem there are lots of policy ideas out there, but the question that i want to ask the two of you is how do we build a movement to raise wages in this country and how do we build and sustain a powerful movement to raise wages. and i know that you two were up late last night mapping out a strategy and then i want to turn to the business argument. >> well, senator warren said that it's all about choices and elected officials have choices and they can choose to be on the side of working people and to

have opportunity for greater number of americans or they can choose to do what has been happening as business as usual partisanship bickering and focusing on the campaign contributors rather than everyday things. but we have this as well. and what you have seen over the last year with a movement that started with fast food workers in new york, what you have seen that has taken a grip all across the country is people making a choice to come and say that it's not just the typical sort of way that we want to do labor organizing and we are going to win a contract and we are going to be happy that we have something even if our neighbors have nothing. instead they put a demand on the entire economy and they said that nobody in this country should make less than a living wage. they think the minimum wage is great, but it's not going to solve the problem of massive inequality in this country, we need a living wage for every

hard-working american. and so we have the opportunity to be bowled by thinking about this new and innovative ways by following the young people who are leading us back to this time of civil disobedience and that is a time of stepping up and stepping out. i think about this wheel that has made the turn. it just keeps on turning. unless something gets in the way it stops it and that is our political machine. that is going to keep going and people will keep taking campaign contributions and they will keep on going to lobby and keep on doing that unless people get in the way of that machine. whether it is in ferguson were in my hometown in milwaukee, people are saying that lives matter in our economy matters in our wages matter and the connection matters and the connection between racial and economic justice matters being

able to help in the country that made me emotional about senator warren, she talked about what she believed in growing up in this country and i feel very much in line with that. my grandmother was born in sharecropping and she started picking cotton at the age of four years old. she wasn't able to get and education. she heard there was work in factories and so she basically had no formal education although one of the smartest one that i met. she built a decent life for my father and was able to go onto a public university and become a public defender and that happened because we invested in people and along the way we stopped investing in people and started investing in the profits of corporations in our country is worse off for it. so we believe in the american dream and then we get our bodies

ready to do it. >> the secretary actually referenced this earlier and talked about working at wal-mart and also having to rely on food stamps. you were a wal-mart worker that took action and retaliated against for just speaking your voice with your colleagues. tell us how we build a movement to raise wages and why you have taken the risks that you have and what you have seen. >> the risk part of it here i feel like my job was just a part of the process. there are several people from several different demographics and jobs and low-wage jobs for all struggling just like i was. but someone has to be willing to go out and lose their jobs and that's part of the process.

so i felt like that was a good thing for me because i knew it was illegal. i worked in wal-mart in 2009 and i participated in several strikes up until last year. and i think that the fact that these companies don't let us speak for ourselves you know, saying that we need better wages, these are the realities of the american people and we can't say well, you work at wal-mart or papa john's but we also want those services and we are going to the corporate offices and we don't want to talk about the out those people don't work what they should. it is definitely the poverty

line and i would never make it off that amount of money. so we have to talk about how these companies have no respect for workers and don't view it as a part of the corporation and it needs to be more of a co-op type situation so workers know what we need and that needs to be heard. [applause] ..

>> >> people largess not earning enough to sustain our family is an economy. with senator warren that this is the first time the next generation the kids will not do as well as we do that in this country i use a lot of four-letter words but i don't use hope they don't have hope for a better future. it is to build power so he is inspiring to give us hope that one person's actions

can make real change. to talk about she and her co-workers payback to challenge the boss she felt powerful and that power builds hope so coming back into our lives and homes because that is what drives us to ways -- raise wages. >> and think what we can do every single dollar we put out as an investment has to be not just a job but a good job. [applause] and hopefully it with better and a union job. we broke grounded present california representative was 60 degrees. [laughter] to build the high-speed rail

a decade in the making but but it will all go to create a good job we are fighting that the cars are built in california. every dollar will create a good job. [applause] >> but i want to ask a question first but the secretary said interesting things dicey business leaders to understand my most precious asset is my worker you run hell's kitchen catering so why as a business leader in particular this is important

that the credit dried up and other things happened but in a nutshell it vanished. now to hunker down to figure it out. but as we've made in this recovery demand is still sluggish. the reason is 60% of the jobs disappear in 2008 and 2009 but those were under 30,000 per year. and 60 percent of those that have come back are under $30,000 per year. over a 21% are middle income.

he now has $10 million to spend but if i had wanted to people in my community with $100,000 each, and that is the conversation. it is not just a magic bullet. you cannot stop a minimum-wage that is from the of leading edge of raising wages overall. that should be an argument rigid back to what we call of the american community's. [applause] that workers don't just go to work so they can die to

put the debt on to their children with human dignity they shed save for there childrens' college. or take a vacation. and did to build with society. the last time i'll say anything to have this conversation about business i want everybody here to understand there is not a model those that take up profits and reinvest and what does that look like ted years down the road?

is. [applause] >> we need to keep that in libraries spend our money. to do minimum-wage with the long-term health of that community. i would like my company to be here 40 years from now. >>. >> but more imports and they a strong union member. [applause] >> but shea was a waitress before but many who work in

the restaurant industry the minimum wage is still way too low. so tell us along the journey with a struggling actor working in the restaurant industry and in hollywood. >> and i was a waitress i had a dream of a job and when i got my first acting job it was professionalism and enjoy a to do this thing that i dreamed of. and although i have been very fortunate in my work i realize i did not get here alone. when i addition to your city that is given by people and then the union called to say

there were issues. faith. amplify the voice. and if they want my support that i want to be there to support them because every day when i do my work they are making the movie is with us they build the roads that get me to this set an m1 to be there to support them. [applause] state and last but not least the president of uaw local

42 from chattanooga tennessee. speaking of collective bargaining michael has been part, president of union that is a certified not legally but it is a union. and it is strong. so to talk about the role of workers' voice. but to have the worker voice is on company boards in faulted fundamental decision making wire year's local 42 and what does that have to do with raising wages? >> i.m. president of 42 and we have the charter we had

an election that was highly volatile i'll, they said we would not have the issue to a cave on the news. if they voted that we were approved. we lost the vote but then in chattanooga in this morning the trustees of the local paper made an announcement to have 49 8% plus -- 49% to

engage with the executive board once the first meeting is tomorrow at 1:00. [applause] so today the local paper comes out because of the gains that the uaw made. that is our struggle. three have led executive order we have an election in this sunday. we do what we have to do. but do get back though prayers' rental volkswagen last month and the human-resources with there

were killed coelenterate a. i never thought as an american dream have to depend on other countries with the minimum standards. [applause] we have a workable in germany you have to have collective bargaining by laws of the united states but said% or three years? that is the standard. but to boycott the products for people to have a higher standard of wages or temporary workers a and workers' rights.

this allows the company to work together to be highly saturated the were council is one way in the day work on everything from overtime the you get has the same role that it always had with a coordinated effort.

they think of workers as an investment and let's be honest we have activist shareholders to go after ceos to give raises to workers to say that