American Workers Deserve Retirement Security

American Workers Deserve Retirement Security

Speech by Anna Burger at the Rainbow/PUSH Wall Street Project, New York City, January 11, 2006

Thank you Reverend Jackson, we can always count on you to stand with workers. You bring us together so that we can stand together and win for all of our families and our communities. You force us to take on the hard issues so that we can win together. And I thank you for your determination and commitment to the security workers and their efforts to organize. They need you. We need you.

Like many of you, I grew up in an America that valued work and workers. One in three workers was in a union, and a union job raised up whole families, whole communities, whole generations.

And each generation in America had one common legacy. They passed on to their children a better life than their own. We call that legacy the American Dream. And, when you had a union job it meant you were on the road to the American Dream.

But that dream is flickering. Working in America is very different today from when I got my first job.

Continued...