Speech by Bill Bradley at the Iowa
  AFL-CIO 

    Well, thank you very much Mark, for that very generous
    introduction. If you really want to know about "Dollar" Bill,
    the reality is that neither of those answers is true. It's not
    because of the last second shot. It's not because of the
    contract. It's because I'm tight with a dollar. And that's
    why our campaign office here in Iowa is paying $250 a
    month, only, for office space - because I'm so tight with a
    dollar. 

    Let me begin simply by thanking Mark Smith for the
    courtesy he has shown me throughout this process. It is
    a great honor for me to be able to come and speak
    before the Legislative Conference last winter. Mark has
    been unfailingly courteous to me, opening up all of the
    locals if I wanted to visit, and I can't thank you enough
    Mark for that courtesy that you have shown me. 

    I thought maybe I would begin by telling you a story about
    when I was a basketball player. You know, I did make my
    living running around in drafty arenas in short pants for
    about ten years. In about my second or third year we
    played the Boston Celtics back-to-back Saturday night
    and Sunday afternoon, and we lost both games. The
    following week, I got a letter from a fan and the letter
    said, "Bradley, if you lose one more game to the Boston
    Celtics, I'm coming to your house to kill your dog," and
    the guy signed his name: "Joe Pell". Maybe because he
    signed his name, I don't know, I wrote back to him and I
    said, "Dear Joe Pell ... Look, we don't like to lose any
    more than you do. We're doing the best we can. And by
    the way, I don't own a dog." 

    Well, you can guess what happened. About two weeks
    later, a UPS truck pulled up in front of our house and the
    guy gets out of the UPS truck and he's carrying a big box
    and he picks that box up and puts it up on our front
    steps. And my wife looks out, sees the box, and comes
    in and says, "Bill, what is that box out there, there's a
    dog in it." And I look outside - there's the box, a dog
    inside the box. On the outside of the box there's an
    envelope. On the outside of the envelope it says, "From
    Joe Pell." And I opened the envelope and there's a note
    inside. The note says, "Bradley, don't get too attached to
    this dog." 

    You know, I also remember back in 1964 when I was
    playing on the U.S. Olympic basketball team. We won
    the gold medal, and in the final game we were playing
    the Russians. And in order to prepare for that game -
    because I though we'd end up playing the Russians in
    the finals, because I thought they had the second-best
    basketball program in the world - I went to a Russian
    professor in college and I said, "Could you give me a
    few words in Russian that I could use, in case I get into
    trouble out there against the Soviets?" He said, "Well,
    what do you want to know in Russian?" I said, "Well, how
    about, 'Hey big fella, watch out!'" So, he gives me the
    words in Russian. Sure enough, we get to the finals of
    the Olympic Games. We are playing the Soviet Union.
    My man is 6'7", weighs about 240. About 8 minutes into
    the game, he cracks me with an elbow up along my
    upper chest and my lower neck and I kind of fall back
    and momentarily lose my voice. And then I remember
    what the professor said. So I gather myself up. I put on
    my meanest face possible. I looked him right in the eye
    and I said, "--------![in Russian]" Which literally translated
    means, "Hey big fella, watch out!" Now, a funny thing
    happened, because up until that moment the Russians
    called all of their plays vocally. So at that point, the
    opposing team thought that I understood Russian. They
    stopped talking to each other and we went on to win the
    gold medal. 

    I guess there is a little moral there: just be ready for
    whatever's on the horizon. And that's certainly true in the
    political campaign that I find myself in now. I've been a
    candidate for President now for about nine months. It's
    been a terrific experience. I think some mornings when I
    wake up that I should be paying people for that
    experience. My wife says, "Wait six or seven months.
    You might not be feeling that way." But that's the way I
    feel now. 

    And I think it's particularly appropriate that the
    presidential race begins in Iowa in the caucuses,
    because I think of how most people get into politics.
    Most people get into politics when they are running for
    mayor or for state senate or for some other office, by
    meeting with small groups of people in living rooms and
    union halls, on back porches, in community centers, and
    telling them why they want to be mayor or why they want
    to be state senator. And the people, they take their
    measure of the person to decide, "Is this the person that
    I want to represent me?" And it's only appropriate that
    when you're running for the most powerful office in the
    world, President of the United States, that you begin in
    the same place that every politician began. And that is in
    the living rooms and union halls and community centers
    of Iowa, telling people what you believe, why, what you
    want to do -- and letting them take their measure of you.
    Not in some image that has been broadcast on
    television with a little 30 second commercial that tries to
    manipulate people toward specific objectives. Of
    course, there will have to be that at some point -but in
    Iowa and New Hampshire, it is small groups of people
    listening to you and taking their measure of you to
    determine if you're the person they want for the biggest
    job in the country. 

    I particularly enjoy my chance to visit locals in Iowa. I am,
    as I said to Mark, deeply appreciative of your courtesy. I
    also appreciate that at the national level no endorsement
    has been made, and that that has given me a chance -
    and is giving me a chance - to make my case for why I
    think I deserve your support. You know, the whole
    purpose of my campaign is to just go out and talk to
    people. You go out and tell them what you believe and
    why and what you want to do. Maybe you err on the side
    of plain speaking - I heard the story in New Jersey where
    I come from, where I represented for 18 years. Some
    guys get off the night shift and they go into a diner.
    They're tired. They gotta have some breakfast before
    they go home. So a waitress comes up. She's been
    there a lot of years. And one of them says, "O.K., I want
    some bacon, eggs, toast, and I want a kind word." This
    stupefied waitress looks at him and kind of takes a
    glance, goes off gets the bacon, eggs, and toast, comes
    back: "Here's your bacon, eggs, and toast," puts it on
    the table kind of brusque, kind of abruptly. And the guy
    looks at the bacon, eggs, and toast and says, "O.K., how
    about a kind word?" She looks at him and says, "If I
    were you, I wouldn't eat them eggs." 

    So, I'm trying, you see, to get up and tell it like it is. And I
    think that we're living in a time of tremendous change. I
    don't need to tell all of you: changes in the structure of
    our economy, in technology, changes in the nature and
    origin of immigration, changes in the nature of military
    threats today, changes in the nature of our family
    structure in this country. And in the midst of all of this
    change, we know that a couple of things have happened.
    One thing we know has happened is that the economy is
    doing well. If you look at the economic numbers - over
    the last sixteen years, for example, there have been only
    four quarters of recession in the country as a whole. And
    yet, when you look at our individual circumstances, in
    many families in this country, you find that things are not
    quite as the numbers convey. For example, last year in
    the United States family income went up, which sounds
    like a good thing. But the reason family income went up
    in America is that more people in a family were working.
    And often, more jobs. And often, for less benefits. So
    when I think about my campaign for President of the
    United States, one of my absolute key objectives is to
    make sure that more Americans - working families in
    America - get on the prosperity train in America. That we
    don't have a train that moves along and leaves more and
    more people behind and the train moves faster and
    faster going in one direction and other people not able
    to get on that train. 

    And so the question is - for some of you maybe - "Why
    do you feel that way? How do I know you're on my side?
    Who are you, why, what're you going to do?" 

    Well, let me start off with a little personal history. I grew
    up in a small town in Missouri, on the banks of the
    Mississippi River. It was a town that had 96 in my high
    school graduating class and one stoplight. It was a
    factory town: Pittsburgh Plate Glass Factory used to
    employ 3,000 people in that town. My father was - I
    guess we would say these days - he was disabled. He
    had calcified arthritis of the lower spine. I never saw him
    drive a car, throw a ball, tie his shoes. My mother and I
    had to help him get dressed every day. But at age 21 he
    went to work in a bank in that small town - the little town
    there. He said his job was shining pennies. But over forty
    years he worked his way up until he was the majority
    shareholder in that small town bank. And I once asked
    him, as kids do, "Well, what was you're proudest
    moment, Dad?" He said that his proudest moment was
    that throughout the Great Depression he never
    foreclosed on a single home. Well, he didn't do that as a
    handout. He viewed that as giving hard-working families
    the break they deserved in tough times. 

    I grew up early with an understanding the importance of
    a labor union. In that glass factory, there was a labor
    union. The workers received benefits. Five miles up the
    road my uncle worked in a lead factory. There was no
    labor union. There were very little benefits. In fact, after
    many, many years of work - ill, in part from the
    unsafeness of the conditions in which he worked - he
    retired to a $60 a month pension. I also with the New
    York Knicks was a shop steward for nine years in the
    players' union. That was at a time when the average
    salary was $9,500. That was a time when you had to go
    out and fight for things like a pension, like health care,
    like the things that every union in America has fought for.
    And I feel very confident in saying that I am the only
    candidate for President of the United States with a union
    pension. 

    And I look at you and think, "Maybe that is enough to
    explain it, the 86% AFL-CIO lifetime voting record that
    Mark talked about. But I think that it's deeper than that
    personal history, because as I look at the history of our
    country, I see the labor movement as playing an
    enormously positive force, and prospectively must play
    an increasingly positive force. During my eighteen years
    in the Senate, I used to have a picture on the wall of my
    office. It was a picture of an eleven-year old girl in a
    textile mill, her face tired and older than her years. She
    was a child laborer. Because of the union movement
    and Woodrow Wilson's child labor laws, we're better
    because no child can work in America today underage.
    Because of the labor movement, collective bargaining
    and workman's compensation were instituted, so that
    people would have a fair chance to get a decent wage.
    The labor movement at its best moments not only
    thought of itself, but thought of the country as a whole.
    The civil rights effort of the 1960s, which broadened
    participation in our democracy in a fundamental way,
    occurred in large part because of the labor movement's
    efforts. Medicare: because of the labor movement's
    efforts. And then in the 70s because the workplace was
    increasingly dangerous, OSHA: because of the labor
    movement's efforts. Virtually every advancement in this
    country in this century for the betterment of working
    families has been achieved because of the labor
    movement. 

    The only grandfather that I ever knew came to this
    country. He worked in Pittsburgh Plate Glass Factory -
    that glass factory in that small town - and he worked long
    and hard. And after work he for lived for three things: He
    lived first of all to go to the public library on a Saturday
    night and check out two western novels, which he would
    read and read over and over again. The second thing he
    lived for was to sit on his front porch on a hot summer
    night with a can of Budweiser in his hand and a rocking
    chair, listening to his first love on the radio, the St. Louis
    Cardinals. The third thing he lived for was to tell his only
    grandson, me, what America meant to him. And he said,
    "America is great. America is great because it is free
    and because people care about each other." 

    And I've always thought that those two things - freedom
    and caring - are about the best definition of what
    America is about that I have ever heard. Freedom is not
    something that you have without a price. There are many
    Americans who paid the price with their life over the
    years in order to protect that freedom in this country.
    Freedom is also not just political; it is also economic.
    Part of freedom is the importance of unions in our world
    - the importance of the free trade union movement in this
    country and around the world. 

    And nobody believed that more than the late Lane
    Kirkland. He was a man whose very fiber believed that
    Democracy and the free trade union movement were
    marching the same path, and it was the path that history
    was going to go. In 1980, when there was the Solidarity
    movement in Poland, he sided with that union to make
    sure that the full force of the American free-trade labor
    movement stood with Solidarity. And the change after
    the Cold War: he made sure that the way you defined
    Democracy in a lot of the countries of Eastern Europe,
    entailed having a free-trade union movement. So I think
    that we lost a great man a couple of days ago. He was a
    man that every person in the labor movement should be
    proud of. In addition, he believed, as I do, that the labor
    movement should be a part of American foreign policy.
    That we should strive to have more people around the
    world represented by a union, just as you are
    representing your people by a union. Because if it is not
    a state union, but a free-trade union movement, that
    means that people in those countries will tend to have
    higher living standards and that is good for all of us. 

    What about caring about each other? Freedom and
    caring. Seems to me that's what a union is all about. It's
    about caring about your brother or sister. For example,
    in 1965 the NBA players were who were at an All-Star
    game stayed in the locker room - stayed in the locker
    room - and would not go out and play in the All-Star
    game until the owners recognized the union. They were
    the stars, but they realized they were a part of a larger
    group - everybody - and they stayed in there until they
    were recognized and then they stepped forward. And the
    union was born. 

    Last winter I was up at Titan Tire. That's what caring
    about each other is about. I talked to workers wondering
    if the strike fund was really going to last. "What's going
    to happen?" they said. I saw the shacks; I heard the
    stories of pointing laser beams on people's chests, the
    intimidation that goes on. And the only thing holding
    people together was the belief that if they cared about
    each other, if they came together, they had a chance.
    They had a chance of succeeding, and of making their
    strike work. 

    I believe that if you want to help working families in
    America today you have to start with unions. You start
    with the union, and when you do, you start with
    organizing. And we all know what's happened to
    organizing in this country over the last twenty or thirty
    years. Used to be that thirty percent of the workers in the
    private sector were represented by a union. Now that's
    down to 11%. In 1960, there were 6,300 election
    petitions filed. Last year there were 3,400 election
    petitions filed. Thirty years ago, sixty to sixty-five percent
    of the elections would go for unionization. Last year,
    1997, just 48% went for unionization. The National Labor
    Relations Board, which enforces the labor laws used to
    have 3,300 people working for it. Last year it had 1,800
    people working for it. 

    All of those numbers are not good. They're not good for
    you. They're not good for working people. And they're
    not good for this country. And I think that you have to
    begin to say, "Why is that the case? Why is that
    happening?" It's certainly not because there aren't
    dedicated trade unionists in this country, dedicated
    organizers. There's a whole new generation of young
    people out there who see their future and the future of
    the country served by their organizing efforts. It is
    because it is more difficult to organize. It is because the
    law is tilted in the other direction. It is because the
    Congress of the United States has not, since 1978
    taken a hard look at labor law reform in this country. That
    is why these numbers have occurred. And that means if
    you are going to get more people represented by a
    union - and in so doing give them a chance to do better
    by their family - you've got to try to change these laws so
    that more people can succeed in their organizing efforts.

    For example, the law now says that it is against the law
    to fire an organizer. But we all know that the law doesn't
    work. It doesn't work because there are no teeth in the
    law. If you're organizing, and someone has a whiff that
    you're organizing, you're fired like that. Because an
    employer only has to pay - after a lengthy process, he
    only has to pay back wages - that's it. I think we need to
    put teeth in that law, and say that if somebody is fired for
    organizing, and it goes through that process and you
    prove it, then that employer has to pay three times back
    wages, plus punitive damages. 

    I think you've got to shorten the time between when
    cards are collected, and the election actually takes
    place. 

    I think you need a ban on striker replacement in this
    country. 

    I think you need to make the companies that violate the
    labor laws ineligible for government contracts in this
    country. 

    And those are the beginning things. You know, I was out
    at Titan talking about that strike, and talking about what
    they did, talking about how an employer would go up to
    somebody for, like, 22 days in a row, and say to them,
    "By the way, today you're working compulsory overtime.
    You're working overtime today." Time after time after
    time after time. The result was, of course, people said,
    "We've had enough. Let's go out." 

    I think we gave to consider no compulsory overtime.
    Overtime is a great thing. If want to support your family,
    you've got a chance to work more, here's your overtime,
    you get better pay, and you go work - that's great. It
    sometimes is the very best of things. But if you're a
    mother, you're on the line, you're working, you have to go
    pick up your kids, you have to take care of your elderly
    parent, the time has come, and ten minutes before
    you're supposed to leave, you have to stay and work - it
    could be the very worst of things. 

    Now, why the need to organize more? Why the need to
    change the laws so you can organize more? Why the
    need to get people to have a chance to be represented
    by a union? 

    Do you know who the lowest-paid workers in America
    are? The lowest-paid workers in America are those who
    take care of our children and those who take care of our
    elderly parents when they are dying. Those are the
    lowest-paid workers in America. And that is why in this
    campaign to date, the most memorable and moving
    moment to date was last February in Los Angeles,
    California, when the SEIU successfully completed the
    organization of 75,000 home health care workers. Those
    75,000 home health care workers - prior to that moment
    - were independent contractors. And they were out there
    drifting; trying to make a deal with the home health
    agency to go to this home or that home, sometimes
    arriving, they're only supposed to be there three hours
    because that's all they're paid for, somebody's sick, they
    stay six hours - because they're not going to leave
    somebody who's sick or dying - and so they stay. But
    they're not compensated. And on the other hand if you're
    the recipient of that labor, if you're the recipient of that
    person coming into your home, you don't know if the
    person's checked out, you don't know if the person's
    going to rob you - you don't know what the situation is. If
    you have 75,000 home health care workers represented
    by a union, you then will ensure quality care, and you will
    ensure for the worker, a better standard of living. That's
    what you get with this. 

    Now I'll tell you, I was out there, and I talked to a woman
    who was a home health care worker. And she told me
    the following story. I said, "Well, what do you do?" She
    said, "What I do - and I love my job - I sit with people as
    they're dying. And usually when somebody's dying," she
    said, "they're afraid." 

    "So I'll take out the scriptures and I'll read it to them. And
    as I read they become calmer and calmer." She said,
    "One time I was with a man who was very ill, didn't know
    how long he was going to last, and he was very afraid,
    so I read him the scriptures. And I was called out of the
    room for a moment, and I came back in and he had
    passed. But there was a smile on his face." 

    That's who the lowest paid workers are in this country.
    Those workers deserve to be represented by a union for
    the same reason that the first worker in this country to be
    represented by a union deserved it. Because they
    deserve to have the power of the union behind them to
    give them leverage to get more money and better
    benefits for their family. It's as simple as that. 

    So let me tell you something. I am running so that more
    and more people can get to higher economic ground in
    this country. I believe we need more economic growth,
    more fairly shared. That's why we have to increase the
    minimum wage. There's no question about that in this
    country, no question that needs to happen. That's why
    we need to make sure every American is covered by a
    health insurance policy in this country, with an economy
    as good as ours. 

    You know every year in New Jersey I walk along the
    Jersey shore and meet people in the summertime. And
    three years ago a woman came up to me and she said,
    "Bill, my husband lost his job 18 months ago; I lost my
    job nine months ago. We don't have any health
    insurance for our kids. I went to our family pediatrician,
    and he said he would take care of us until one of us got
    another job and could some get health insurance." And
    she said, "Bill, in the United States of America, you
    shouldn't have to have a friendly pediatrician in order to
    get health coverage for your kids." 

    I was here in Iowa last winter, being shown around a
    health care clinic. There was an elderly man there, and
    he described symptoms which were clearly colon
    cancer. And I said, "Why don't you go get that taken care
    of? How long have these symptoms been going?" And
    he said, "Oh, two or three months." And I said, "Why
    don't you get that taken care of?" And he said, "I don't
    have a health insurance policy. I don't know how I'm
    going to pay for it." That shouldn't happen in the United
    States of America. 

    And what about another issue: Campaign Finance
    Reform. 

    I was in the United States Senate for 18 years, served
    on the Finance Committee. And whenever there was a
    big tax bill that involved hundreds of billions of dollars,
    the room was jam-packed. There were people out and
    down the hallway. There's a book called The Shootout at
    Gucci Gulch, because of the Gucci shoes the lobbyists
    would wear as they were waiting to try to get their
    provisions in the tax bill that would reduce their clients'
    taxes, and thereby leave the rest of us paying higher
    taxes than we otherwise would pay. The cell phones
    were buzzing - hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. 

    Three days later, there would be a bill that would come
    up to the Finance Committee on child poverty. It would
    involve tens of millions of dollars. There would not be a
    full room - three quarters of it would be empty; there
    would be no cell phones. 

    If we want to do anything in this country that is really
    aimed at helping working families, we're going to have
    to get campaign finance reform - because in a country
    where we have one person, one vote, we know that the
    people who have more money, have more clout than one
    vote. And we know that with 11 percent of the private
    sector organized as unions, that even a union vote is
    sometimes not big enough to counter that power. So
    when I talk about campaign finance reform, I'm not
    talking about some kind of esoteric subject. I'm talking
    about the way you equalize the playing field, for you to
    get the kind of things that you need to make sure you
    have bread to put on the table for your family; to make
    sure that you have health insurance; to make sure your
    children have a chance for a better life. 

    And one other thing we've got to do: we have to make it
    easier to vote in America. In 1996 a little over 50 percent
    of the people voted, about 25 percent of the people
    elected the President of the United States. When you
    take a citizenship exam, there's a question on the
    citizenship exam: It says, "What is the most important
    right?" Some people say it's the right to free speech,
    some people say it's the right to worship as you choose
    - that's not the answer. On the test, the answer is, it is the
    right to vote. 

    And yet it is the only right that we put obstacles in the
    way of people getting to exercise that right to vote. So
    what I'm saying is that we ought to have same-day
    registration, like they do in Minnesota - one in six people
    vote there by registering the same day. We ought to
    have voting by mail, like they do in Oregon - so that the
    disabled and the elderly and people who can't get to the
    polls can vote. That is one way that we're going to be
    able to move this country forward. 

    One last thing about who I am and what I think the labor
    movement stands for: We have to recognize the
    importance of racial unity in this country. I mean, if you
    believe you're your brother's keeper, that's your morality,
    then you've got to walk your talk. If you want to lead the
    world by the power of your example, as a multi-racial
    society that works, you've got to do better. But if neither
    morality nor world-leadership grab you, try self-interest.
    Because by the year 2010, less than 60 percent of the
    people in the workforce in America are going to be
    native-born white Americans. And that means the
    economic future of the children of white Americans will
    be increasingly dependent upon the talents of non-white
    Americans. And that is not ideology; it's demographics. 

    So I'm out running, trying to do the best I can; trying to let
    people know four-square what I want to do, why I want to
    do it, and why I think it's good for working families. I
    wasn't to close by sharing just one story with you. 

    During my terms in the Senate I represented New
    Jersey. I remember one year, there was a big UAW
    plant up in Mahwah, New Jersey - and it was closing
    down. And so as a way of showing solidarity with the
    workers, I decided to go into the plant on one of the last
    days of its existence. The day I went happened to be
    May Day, just by coincidence. And as I walked in, the
    manager who took me in with the union representative,
    said to me, "I don't know what's going to happen - the
    plant's closing, it's May Day, I don't know if there's a
    faction in here, who knows what's going to happen. Just
    be ready for anything." 

    I walked into the plant - and there was no trouble. Every
    other workstation had an American flag planted at the
    workstation. Sometimes they were this big; sometimes
    they were that big. When I saw that, I thought to myself,
    this is an incredible trust. An incredible trust in this
    country, and an incredible trust in me as a senator who
    seeks to represent working people. And ever since that
    day, I have thought to myself, that is a trust that I want to
    be worthy of. And I have tried to live my life in that way. 

    Thank you very much.


