Mr. President, I rise to speak about the rallies that have occurred all across this country.
Today Americans in all 50 states are gathering at hundreds of rallies and events to stand together in unity in defense of the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Rights that I believe are now under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states across this country.
That those demonstrations have been held today is no mere coincidence, for on this day 43 years ago, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, while standing up for the rights of 1,300 public sanitation workers.
Working men and women gathered early today in Wilmington to declare: “We Are One,” and within the hour of this speech, thousands more will gather in Madison, Wisconsin to protest what, in my view, is the scandalous move by Governor Walker to strip Wisconsin’s long-standing collective bargaining rights from public-sector employees.
Before coming to this body, I served as the county executive of New Castle County, Delaware for six years, and before becoming governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker was also a county executive — in his case, of Milwaukee County for eight years. I understand the difficult choices that executives face when they must adopt a balanced budget even in the toughest of economic and fiscal times, for as county executive I too faced extremely difficult choices. As did you, Mr. President, as the governor of West Virginia.
But I rise today because I know from my experience cutting spending and in balancing budgets that it can be done without stripping American workers of their fundamental rights to organize and collectively bargain. I know it because I’ve done it, through collective bargaining and without resorting to blaming and draconian anti-union legislation.
New Castle County, Delaware is a mid-sized county government that serves just over half a million people and has a budget of 230 million. As a county executive, I confronted a growing and real budget problem. Our housing boom had masked a deepening spending deficit — deficits that were unsustainable even before the economic collapse in 2008. As our national and local economies tumbled, our government’s revenue did as well. I’d already spent my first few years as county executive cutting spending each and every year and the simple cuts had given way.
We had only fundamental cuts left in front of us. We had already reduced library hours and popular public events, and made difficult choices that many local governments and state governments face today. That wasn’t enough.
As with many state and local governments, our budget was three-quarters personnel costs and we could not allow those costs to continue to grow, as health care and pension costs boomed. We needed to cut our “people” costs to get our budget under control. Now in our case, in the case of the county I formerly served, more than 80% of the county workforce is represented by organized labor, mostly by AFSCME, but also the FOP and IBEW, and we needed all groups to come together and share in the sacrifice that lay ahead.
Mr. President, it was just two years ago last week that I rose before our county council and delivered the hardest budget address I had ever given, one in which I laid out that we had two paths forward. One path would involve having all the suffering focused on about 150 to 200 public employees who would have to be laid off to balance our budget. And the other was sharing that sacrifice across our entire mostly unionized workforce.
Ultimately, after many meetings, many negotiations, very hard talk and debate and, yes, even at one point some layoffs, every bargaining unit in our county government came to the table, worked collaboratively, and helped us reach the goal of cutting 5 percent of our total personnel costs not just one year but as the recession continued and deepened, a second year as well. Many of these great and dedicated public employees saw health care costs shift and benefit packages change as well. But together, they were willing share the sacrifice, to work in the best interests of our county and public, and to acknowledge that “We Are One.”
In some ways, seeking a legislative solution, such as has been done in Wisconsin, trying to simply strip away the right to be organized — to be at the bargaining table — might have seemed easier.
Working together, as you know, Mr. President, as labor and management is not an easy path. No one wants to hear that they have to do more with less, especially when it comes to their own paychecks and public employees in Delaware and all across this country are in my view not just the backbone of our community, but the backbone of our middle class. They are the policemen, the paramedics, the 911 call takers, the emergency sewer repair men, the librarians, the teachers, the health service workers, the prison guards, the folks who keep our community safe, healthy and prepared for the future day in and day out. And in my view, where public employees come together to organize and seek collectively representation on workplace issues, we ought to respect those choices.
Collective bargaining serves as a critical check on our system and its long and storied history is an important part of American history and American values. It is that check that led to the end of child labor practices that led to the 40-hour workweek, and the weekend, to workplace safety rules and ended legal sweatshops. It is a critical check against excesses and overreach by management and by the marketplace.
Mr. President, I stand here today to remind all of us that labor unions and hundreds of thousands of public employees they represent in this country are not the enemy.
We all know that this country faces a significant, almost devastating national debt and annual budget deficit, and we are going to have to make shared sacrifices and tough choices to get through these next few years. But that does not require that we strip the collectively bargaining rights of the hundreds of thousands of public employees who serve us at the federal government and the hundreds of thousands who serve our nation at every level of government. More often than not, they do the difficult, the dirty, and the dangerous jobs that keep us safe and make our communities strong. And they simply, in my view, do not deserve to be demonized but rather, to be listened to, respected, and partnered with, as together we seek solutions to the challenges facing our country now and in the future.
In my view, passing new laws to eliminate their basic collective bargaining rights is wrong and we can do it better by working together. So today I join with all those who are standing up for these fundamental rights of the American worker and join them in declaring: “We Are One.”
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