The AFL-CIO issued the following transcript of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s remarks to be delivered today at 12:30pm EST at the American Bankers Association Protest in Chicago, Illinois. Here’s the full text:
Welcome to the showdown. We’re gathered here today to send a message
to the bankers meeting inside, and the message is this:
Business as usual is over. We are shutting it down. You work for
us-not the other way around. Your job is to be stewards of our
savings-to put and keep working families in homes, to lend the money
companies need to create jobs. And you have failed. You’ve turned
the American economy into your own private casino, gambling away our
financial future with our money, driving us to the brink of a second
Great Depression, then sticking out your hand for taxpayers to bail you
out.
And Bankers, let me tell you this: We didn’t put you back in
business so you can pay billions in bonuses to the suits; those bonuses
have to go. And we didn’t put you back in business so you could pile
money and lobbyists into Capitol Hill to fight the financial reform we
so desperately need-while we’re losing jobs, losing our homes, losing
our retirement savings, losing it all-because you treated the money we
worked so hard to earn like Monopoly money. Let me tell you-this is not
a game. It’s our lives. And we are not going to let bankers rule our
lives or our country.
Sisters and brothers, we are here to mark a new day, a day when we
demand accountability from our financial system. We demand
accountability for the pain the Big Bankers have inflicted on families
who face financial ruin, for joblessness, pensions wiped out,
foreclosures and bankruptcy. And we are here to support President
Obama’s call for tough new regulations to force these bankers out of
their Wild West mentality, out of their arrogance, out of their contempt
for the public they’re supposed to serve.
How do you like the Obama team’s cutting the shreds out of
those banker bonuses? I say, good start-now bring on the rest. Bring
on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to grind out predatory
lending, mortgage rip-offs, outrageous overdraft fees, and sky-high
credit card interest rates. Bring on some real risk regulation, so the
Big Banks can’t ever, ever shove the American economy to its knees
again.
No more financial institutions that get “too big to fail,” too
complex or too interconnected. No more asking the banks to regulate
themselves. It’s time to either reform the Federal Reserve or ask the
Fed to step aside and have a real public agency protect our economy from
the banks.
Bring on a spotlight for those “shadow markets,” the unregulated
hedge funds, private equity funds and derivatives that need real
regulation before they suck even more money into the black hole of greed
and speculation. Bring it on.
Our economy has been all but destroyed. We have to build a whole new
one based on good jobs, not on bad debt with America investing in and
exporting technology and world-class products, not financial crisis;
where hard work is rewarded, not colossal failure; where workers have a
real voice because they have the freedom to have a union if they want
one; and where all of us have the health care we need. That’s what
we can do when we get these bankers and their treachery under control.
When we put people first.
The American Dream isn’t a dream just for the richest 1 percent. The
American promise isn’t a promise that a few can live well off their
assets while the many can barely live. Today we are here to redeem the
real promise of America-our America-a stronger America that provides
everybody the opportunity to work, to contribute, to succeed.
That’s why you’re here-not just to get angry or outraged, although
there’s plenty to be angry and outraged about. You’re here to make
a difference-to clean up Wall Street’s reeking garbage that is
contaminating Main Street.
I want every single person here to commit to call their members of
Congress, not just today, but every day, and tell them these four
things:
One: Give us the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Two: Reform the Fed or create an agency that’s capable of stopping
systemic risk.
Three: Regulate the shadow markets before they do more damage.
And four: Reform corporate governance and CEO compensation to protect
working people who are long-term investors, not speculators.
Will you do it? Will you make those calls?
Thank you.
Now, Sisters and Brothers, there’s someone else here I’d
like you to meet. Armando Robles is president of UE Local 1110 at what
previously was Republic Windows and Doors here in Chicago. He was a
maintenance mechanic at the factory for eight years, but last year on
December 2, he and his 260 co-workers learned their factory would close
in three days.
Bank of America-which had received billions in taxpayer bailout
funds-cut off the company’s line of credit. The workers were about to
lose their jobs and their promised severance and vacation pay. But
instead, like David, the union workers united to face down a giant.
They staged a six-day sit-in that inspired the country and won support
from their neighborhood to the White House.
If they didn’t have a union, Armando and his co-workers would have
gone home empty-handed. If the Big Banks had their way, these workers
would have nothing. Instead, they won a $1.75 million settlement from
Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.
I’m honored to introduce a working family hero: Armando
Robles.
