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I come before you on the eve of Labor Day to report on the state of the
American workforce. This has been something of a tradition among my 22
predecessors as Secretary of Labor. And it is a tradition I am proud to
carry forward -- with one refinement.
I have chosen to offer my report at an unlikely hour – from an
unlikely place.
Not in the middle of what some call the work week – but on a
Sunday, a day of rest and reflection.
Not from behind a bank of microphones or the imposing table of a
congressional hearing room – but from the pulpit of this grand
cathedral.
So let me begin by posing the obvious questions. Why now? Why here?
The National Cathedral is actually my final stop of a week of travel.
For the past eight days, I have traveled the nation to see America at
work. From Seattle to West Virginia – and Minneapolis, El Paso, and
Nashville along the way – I have listened to America’s working
men and women. I have witnessed what it is like to hold a job and raise a
family today. I have heard testimony to work’s pleasures and its
pains, its wonders and its woes.
And what I heard on my journey affirmed a truth I discovered as a young
girl in my hometown in Mobile, Alabama: next to family and faith, the most
sacred thing in our lives is the work that we do. And as Princess Diana
helped us understand, it is not just in the paid work but it could be in
volunteer work, as we give of ourselves.
Why now? Why here?
Because in America, work has a spiritual dimension, a moral value that
transcends the accountant’s measure of profit and loss. It affirms
our humanity; it strengthens our soul.
The Proverbs tell us: “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent
hands bring wealth.” But the wealth to which the Scripture refers is
not the accumulation of material riches. It is something far more valuable
– something that can only be fashioned with diligent hands.
It is dignity.
Let there be no mistake: work is as much a source of dignity as it is a
source of income.
And what more fitting place to talk about dignity than this dignified
house of God? Standing higher than even the Washington Monument, the
National Cathedral’s mission is to “be a great church for
national purposes.” And for 90 years, it has achieved that mission
with power and with grace. This is the place where Bishop Tutu told
America about the evils of apartheid. Where great leaders who passed from
our lives – including my friend Ron Brown – have been honored
and remembered. Where every President since Theodore Roosevelt has spoken
to the nation.
So from this high place, on this day set aside for reflection, let me
tell you what I’ve seen.
My friends, on Labor Day 1997, the state of the American workforce is
solid, strong, and proud. America’s workers are in better shape than
in many, many years. Working families tell me they are feeling better
about their lives.
After all, our economy is the healthiest in a generation. Unemployment
has dropped to a 24-year low. We have added nearly 13 million new jobs in
the last five years. Our Gross Domestic Product is climbing at a healthy
rate. Inflation is at historic lows. Corporate profits are rising and
setting records.
These are indeed prosperous times.
But, still, a quiet unease lurks in our land -- a nagging sense that
this new prosperity belongs to someone else, a dull fear that our nation
will declare success before all Americans have the opportunity to claim
their fair share.
Across our nation, I have encountered working people who worry that
America’s rising economic tide may be casting our citizens toward two
separate shores. In one direction, this tide may be carrying some
Americans to a promising destination – a new economy, full of
opportunity and challenge. But in the opposite direction, this same tide
may be stranding other Americans on the shoreline of an old economy that
is quickly washing away beneath their feet.
On Labor Day 1997, the task before us as a nation . . . as a moral
people . . . I dare say, as children of God . . . is to make sure that the
economy’s new buoyancy lifts the lives of all Americans. That a
nation moving forward leaves no one behind. That we do not declare our
work completed until America’s new prosperity is shared by all.
For prosperity that is not broadly shared is in fact a false prosperity.
The great religions teach us that. In the fifth book of the Torah, God
says that justice requires that landowners allow the worker in the field
to share in the produce he or she is harvesting. Romans IV reminds
us: “When a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift,
but as an obligation.”
Not a gift. An obligation. An obligation that is both softhearted and
hardheaded. Permit me to make it plain this morning: narrowly held
prosperity is not only morally troubling – it is economically
unsustainable.
Now, take it from someone who ran her own business: there’s nothing
wrong with rising profits. In capitalism, that’s pretty much the
point. But if profits rise and paychecks don’t, something is out of
whack. If the economy booms, but only a few feel the tremors, something
clearly has gone awry.
Economies do not grow for long if one person’s gain is another
person’s loss. The American economy is not some creaky vehicle in
which adding more passengers slows things down. Indeed, it is the exact
opposite. Bringing more people aboard speeds us up. The better more of us
do, the better all of us do.
Let me give you an example. Tomorrow, millions of hard-working people
will get a modest raise. At midnight, the minimum wage will rise from
$4.75 an hour to $5.15 an hour – the second stage of the minimum wage
increase President Clinton fought for, and won, last year. Raising the
minimum was a matter of social justice and economic security.
But do you remember the fight? The opponents didn’t argue the
fairness of the measure. Instead, throughout the debate, we heard a chorus
of Cassandras who predicted that giving hard-working Americans a 90-cent
raise would destroy the whole economy.
Well, it hasn’t. Raising the minimum wage has not hurt the economy.
It has not destroyed jobs. It has not raised unemployment. What is has
done is provide working people with an additional one thousand dollars a
year in buying power. And they’re using that new capacity to fuel the
entire economy. Bringing more people aboard did not slow us down. It sped
us up, made us stronger.
On Labor Day and all days, we cannot forget: Ethics and economics
coincide. The moral and the monetary are intertwined.
Some of you may know that this church’s formal ecclesiastical name
is the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. I thought about
that, and I realized how appropriate it was to speak here on this topic.
Because to ensure that prosperity lifts up all Americans, we do not have
to rob Peter to pay Paul. We can do better together. Indeed, that’s
our only option. The only way some of us can get ahead is if all of us get
ahead.
I learned that in my tour of the American workplace this past week. The
talented and dedicated men and women I met told me they agreed that our
nation is now prosperous. But they said we still have more to do, that our
business is not finished. They looked at their own lives and the lives of
their neighbors, saw good men and women who had not yet claimed their fair
share, and asked me, “What does prosperity truly mean?”
And then they told me.
The Americans I met last week told me prosperity means helping to move
people from welfare to work. In Seattle, Washington I met with women who
were receiving public assistance. Let me tell you: they were not the
convenient stereotypes some people use to demonize welfare recipients. The
women I met . . . their hearts and hands ached for work.
I met one woman who, in the morning, showed me her first resume. And
then in the afternoon, told me she had landed a job. I was so proud of
her. She and others told me that Washington’s discussions of “welfare-to-work”
often focus on the “welfare” and the “work,” but
ignore the “to.” What these women need – what all who seek
the dignity of work need – is a support system. A moral and economic
support system . . . one that includes child care and transportation and
coaching and mentoring and sometimes just someone to lend a sympathetic
ear.
Helping all Americans get a paycheck . . . that passport to dignity . .
. is what prosperity means.
The Americans I met last week told me that prosperity means giving the
opportunity to learn throughout their lifetime. In El Paso, I met with
Chicana women who had been displaced from their jobs. They were a powerful
example that as we celebrate the new economy, we must assist the good
people who remain in the old economy – through education, training,
and skill development that leads to real jobs at the end of the day.
Later in El Paso, I met several dozen youth learning employment skills
through the Job Corps. These young men and women – exquisite in their
blue shirts and khaki pants – affirmed my faith in our future. And
not just because the culinary students made me the best Bananas Foster I
have ever tasted in my whole life.
One Job Corps participant told me: “I have big dreams. But dreaming
isn’t enough. I have to work to make my dreams come true. I have to
learn to make my dreams come true.”
Young people firmly on the path of lifelong learning. That is what
prosperity is all about.
The Americans I met last week told me prosperity means doing well at
work and at home. In Minneapolis, I met with parents who work at one of
the Honeywell Corporation’s amazing high-tech facilities. They’re
helping Honeywell succeed in the global marketplace . . . because
Honeywell is helping them succeed around the kitchen table.
A Honeywell manager told me how the company helped him adopt his two
daughters, and bring them from Colombia, South America. The company gave
him time off, immediate health insurance for his two children, even
Spanish classes. And I’ll never forget the Honeywell food service
worker who told me about her son. Her little boy, just five years old, had
leukemia. Mom took time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
She told me something remarkable: without Family and Medical Leave and
the personal and professional support of her company, her family wouldn’t
have been able to survive. And today, I’m happy to report, the cancer
is in remission. Her little boy is doing just fine.
People well-equipped to balance job demands with family obligations.
That is what prosperity means.
Other Americans I met last week told me prosperity means having dignity
and security not just in their working years, but in retirement as well.
In Nashville, I talked with a Girl Scout troop in the morning and a group
of employees of women-owned businesses in the afternoon who were looking
for retirement security.
Nashville’s women and girls told me something all Americans need to
hear: you’re never too young to start saving for retirement –
and you’re never too old to begin either.
Working people secure in retirement, flourishing even after they’re
done working. That is what prosperity means.
And, finally, the Americans I met last week told me that prosperity
means guaranteeing every working American a safe and healthy workplace --
with the rights and respect they deserve and with equal opportunity for
all. In Morgantown, West Virginia – in the heart of Appalachia –
I took a 1000-foot journey below the Earth’s surface, led by a group
of talented, dedicated coal miners.
Mining is perilous work. Even though Friday was a sunny August morning,
the mine was as cold and dark as a winter night. And by the time I came
back up, I had coal dust on my skin, in my nose, and on my lips. Like
those who go there every day to earn a living . . . in that hour, I felt
work. Smelled work. Tasted work.
Coal mining is a dangerous profession. But one miner told me that this
coal mine was not only one of the most productive in the nation. It was
also one of the safest.
An America where no worker is forced to sacrifice their life for their
livelihood. That is what prosperity means.
The words of these Americans are an important reminder this Labor Day.
By working together – moving people from welfare to work, investing
in learning, balancing work and family, protecting pensions, and keeping
workplaces safe, fair, and free of discrimination – we can redeem the
moral essence of work. And in so doing, we can complete the unfinished
business of America’s new prosperity.
That is what we must do. And when I say “we,” I do not mean
just the President or just the Labor Secretary. I do not mean just
corporations and their stockholders. I do not mean just working people and
the labor unions that represent them. I mean “we” -- in the
broadest, richest, most beautiful sense of that simple word.
For the strength of our nation is -- as the President has said -- that
we are one America. Not a prosperous America and an impoverished America.
One America. Not a skilled America and a stalled America. One America. Not
an educated America and an ignorant America. One America.
The only America worthy of the name is one America – where
prosperity is broadly shared and all people can truly fulfill the heights
of their potential.
And ultimately, there is only one way to build that kind of nation.
Technology cannot manufacture it. Enlightened minds cannot theorize it.
Power cannot dictate it. In the end, the President is right: it must flow
from the human spirit.
This ideal – that we’re all in this together, that we’re
bound by the mutual obligations of humanity – is something that every
religious tradition teaches. And we can be reminded of it in the most
surprising circumstances.
Earlier this month, I found myself at the center of a tough and bitter
strike. For fifteen days, the management of the United Parcel Service and
its Teamster employees were at loggerheads. Historians will determine when
the talks turned, when the deal gelled. But I have my own analysis. I
think both the management and the workers realized that they couldn’t
survive without one another. That the success of one side depended on the
success of the other side.
The settlement was a victory for collective bargaining. And it was a
realization that strong companies and strong unions go hand in hand. The
two sides understood they needed each other.
And the rest of us needed both of them.
Recently I heard a great story from a UPS driver on his first week back
on the job. One afternoon, he came upon a woman he’d been delivering
packages to for 15 years. She ran up to the driver, wrapped her arms
around him and said: "I'm so glad you're all right. Since you've been
delivering to me, I've had three jobs and two husbands. You're the only
stable relationship in my life. If anything happened to you I don't know
what I'd do."
We need each other. We’re in this together.
And as we celebrate work in these prosperous times, we ought to keep in
mind the words of an old woman in my home state of Alabama who said, “I’ve
been down so long that getting up now don’t even cross my mind.”
Let us help her up. Let us bring her to her feet. Let us make her a full
participant in America’s new prosperity.
From this church of great national purposes, on this morning of
reflection, on the eve of the day we honor work and all it means, let us
dedicate ourselves to lifting up the people who make America work. The men
and women who mop the office floors when the lights are dim. Who guard
buildings in the eerie stillness of night. Who care for our babies when
parents cannot. Who wipe our brow when we’re ill. Who tend to our
bodies and our souls when we age. Who cook our food and teach our kids and
fill our orders and patrol our streets and clean our clothes and do all
those other things.
Let us say in a voice that never wavers: all work is important . . . all
workers are prized . . . all people have dignity.
This we owe to one other.
This we owe to America.
This we owe to our God.
Thank you very much. I wish all of you Godspeed and a restful,
fulfilling Labor Day.
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