I will never apologize for standing up for my fellow Teamsters and all American workers.
We've got to keep an eye on the battle that we face - a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party. And there's only one way to beat and win that war - the one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.
All workers want is a fair shake.
Congress has turned its back on America's working families. There are Teamster families in every congressional district in America, and those families vote. Those who would oppose these families have done so at their own political peril.
What's going on in this country? Unions stand against those trends. We've got to somehow insulate the robust American economy from this global economy that seems to want to devour our standard of living.
Corporate tax dodging impacts us across generations and over time. It is corrosive. It is unethical. It is unsustainable.
We didn't start this war - the right wing did. We're tired of seeing good-paying jobs shipped overseas. This fight is about the economy, it's about jobs and it's about rebuilding America.
Today we are united, strong and on the move. Today we have a strong strike fund. Today we have the resources to run large-scale organizing campaigns against global employers. Today we have $100 million in the bank.
The mob's not coming back in the Teamsters Union. We've gotten rid of them, and we're free to be free of government supervision.
And some of those people that voted Republican are now going to say, what a mistake I made because I didn't know they were going to take my job away. I didn't know they were going to take collective bargaining away.
That's what unions do. They can get money, they can get support, they can get manpower.
Labor Day is seen as a day of rest for many hardworking Americans.
We vote - if the public votes 50 percent, we vote 70 percent. So we have a bigger impact with our numbers, and the organization and the manpower we can bring to a race.
It's a success story here in Michigan. We have hiring going on. We have new industries going on.
We must have more union members in this country to fight the political and business forces that are undermining workers in this country. The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach by planning to throw even more money at politicians.
If we're all together, we have money, and we start to organize, you're going to see the Teamsters Union start to bloom.
