Washington, DC
August 2, 2023
Thank you: President Michael Coleman for your continued leadership of this great union and the kind introduction. Congratulations on your new role. We are fortunate to have you in your position in this moment.
And to Secretary Walsh: As always, you leave very big shoes to fill—whether it’s serving as Labor Secretary or coming on stage after you. I’ve said this many times now about Marty, but from the moment we met, he treated me like a true partner in this work. I am deeply grateful for that -- and for the friendship we’ve built along the way – and proud to finish the work we started together.
And thank you to all the SMART union leaders and members here today for the work you’ve done, and continue to do, for hardworking Americans across the country.
Now, I know I don’t need to tell anyone in this room about how a good union job can change lives.
But I can share a little about one of your very own SMART union members, Leah Rambo. Growing up, Leah’s mother always told her it was important to have a skill and a good union job. As a young girl, she used to tinker about the house taking things apart and putting them back together. By the age of 10, she received her first tool set.
She went on to attend Brooklyn Technical High School Career and Technical Education, where she studied electrical engineering and electronics. In her senior year, she did an internship at the hospital as an electrician’s helper. From there, she got her first exposure to on-the-job training and interaction with a union.
That internship changed her life. At that point, she knew that she wanted to be an apprentice.
Fortunately, for her, the Electricians Union was not hiring, and someone told her to try sheet metal. She wasn’t sure what exactly a Sheetmetal worker did, but she knew it was construction! So she traded in her toy tools for real tools.
Leah’s career as a unionized sheetmetal worker gave her an opportunity she never imagined. She received technical training without having to incur unmanageable debt, bought her first home in her early twenties, and was able to retire with a pension.
SMART gave Leah a pathway to the middle class. She even had the ability to look after her parents’ financial needs in their senior years.
Today, I am so proud to work alongside Leah at the Department of Labor. As part of our Women’s Bureau, Leah pays it forward everyday by working on one of our highest priorities: connecting people, especially women, to good jobs in communities all across America – building America, moving America, connecting America.
I, too, know first-hand the transformative power of a good union job. It was just such a job working for Los Angeles County, that took my mom from minimum wage to a pathway for my family to the middle class.
In President Biden’s America, this story is being written as we speak for families all across the nation.
As SMART has noted these are historic times. But federal investments don’t turn into good jobs – don’t turn into good union jobs – automatically. It doesn’t happen by accident. That’s why we have to do the work of building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up—not the top down, as our President says.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
First, empowerment. We’re empowering and educating workers and putting them at the center of the Biden-Harris administration’s economic agenda, especially those who have been traditionally left out or left behind. Empowerment means we support workers’ right to organize and we respect the collective bargaining process.
We see workers’ ability to make demands at the bargaining table not as a threat to our economy but as a critical tool to build a stronger economy, one where workers get their fair share.
Second, equity. We are building equity into everything we do, including embedding equity standards into federal funding opportunities. I know SMART has also made equity within your union a priority.
Third, enforcement. Believe me when I say we are using every tool in our toolbox to protect workers from wage theft, to keep them safe on the job, to fight discrimination, and to protect their hard-earned pensions, which help families build generational wealth.
Part of this is the first update to Davis Bacon in 40 years, something Sec Walsh started and we are going to finish. Because prevailing wage must remain the cornerstone of our nation’s construction.
We can’t build the inclusive economy we envision until we start closing the racial wealth gap. In fact, a report a few years ago found that just by closing the racial wealth gap for Black Americans, our national GDP could be 4 to 6% higher in less than a decade. So, it’s the right thing to do. It’s also the smart thing to do. Ending structural racism is good economic policy.
At the Department of Labor, our North Star is making sure the jobs created are good jobs and connecting workers to those jobs, especially those who have been left out or left behind in the past.
President Biden calls this America’s infrastructure decade. I like to think of the workforce system as infrastructure too—the roads and bridges that connect workers to the good jobs they want and need and employers to the people they want and need.
Our workforce system—just like our physical roads and bridges—also needs some attention. It’s got some cracks, and some potholes. And it doesn’t connect to every community the way it should.
At the Department of Labor, we are building a workforce system infrastructure that’s going to be as strong as the physical infrastructure we’re building—a system that connects to every community, and leaves no one behind.
In fact, the Department of Labor has invested $20 million in the National Urban League to partner with labor unions to expand Apprenticeship Readiness Programs for people of color—that’s a great example of a workforce program done right. It’s going to help to ensure equitable access to the construction jobs being created from the President’s Investing in America agenda.
We are highlighting labor-management partnerships, where training is tied to in-demand jobs with unions at the table at the beginning, where pre-apprenticeship programs and apprenticeships are built in, and where workers get not just a job for the short-term but a career that provides a lifetime of stability, satisfaction and meaning.
This kind of training is developing an open, inclusive pipeline to good jobs in historically underserved communities. The result is a more diverse, more skilled workforce. As everyone in this room knows well, that’s how we tap into the talent and potential of all communities to build our country.
We know what works but now we have to scale what works for major impact.
We are just getting started. There’s more to be done – and we’ll get it done together.
I am proud to be your Acting Labor Secretary in the most pro-worker, pro-union administration in history.
While we build and repair bridges across the country, we can and must also build the bridge from poverty to prosperity, the bridge from exclusion to opportunity, the bridge for individuals to real economic security, the bridge for families to the middle class, and the bridge for all of our communities to an America as good as its promise.
You’ve said it already – this is our time. This is your time. So let’s build.