I am at the end of an extended tour around the country. The final stop is a rally for Houston janitors like Ercillia Sandoval. Ercillia has been nominated for Glamour magazine's Women of the Year for her leadership in trying to change the lives of 5,000 janitors who earn just $21 a night with no benefits cleaning expensive, downtown office buildings.
Recently, Ercillia learned she had breast cancer and believes she very well may die because she had no early detection and no money to pay for treatment. Instead, she just hoped her feeling ill and discomfort would go away.
These courageous janitors in Houston are standing up to change their lives against corporate giants like Chevron. It's Big Oil vs. the courage of working people like Ercillia.
I have felt so much gratitude for SEIU members' devotion every day to making sure hard work is valued and rewarded in America. But it also broke my heart to hear so many stories of hard working Americans who are forced to live paycheck to paycheck. It broke my heart to see America growing apart, with the rich accumulating tremendous wealth while the rest of us fall further behind.
There is Ercillia's story, and the security officer in Minnesota who can afford health care but only by eating at a soup kitchen every day, and parents in Seattle forced to choose which of their children will have insurance because they cannot afford to cover them all.
In Los Angeles I heard about men and women working two or three jobs, worried that with all the time they spend working they will miss seeing their children grow up. In New York, I came across a man who has an eye infection that is going untreated because he has no money for medication - and even if he did have enough money to pay for treatment he receives no sick leave, so seeing the doctor means losing a day's pay.
And there was Timothy Bowers, who at age 62 robbed a bank so he could have time in prison where he would have health insurance and a roof over his heard until he turns 65 and can collect Social Security and Medicare. I talked with mothers whose kids could not afford to go to college, and they told me how miserably the schools were failing their children.
We are living in a time when the stock market is at record highs, the economy is growing, and the Fortune 400 CEOs are all billionaires. If the minimum wage had been indexed to CEO's salaries since 1990, it would be would be $23.03. The share of income today going to profits is at a record highs while the share of wages is at a record low. America needs a new economic plan.
This is not our fathers' and grandfathers' economy. The one job in a lifetime career is over. Employers and employees are getting a divorce, and employer-provided health coverage and pensions are disappearing. We are truly in a global economy and our dominance is not guaranteed. China is our first economic competitor and many analysts think they could pass us economically over the next 20 or 25 years. Americans are anxious and more in debt than ever before.
That is not the America we want or need. America needs a plan to make sure that everyone shares in the wealth of a growing economy, not just shareholders and executives.
Thank God that our country does not have the lack of economic resources of countries like Bosnia or Rwanda. This is the United States of America, the richest country on earth, with eight of the top 10 research institutions in the world. We won Nobel Prizes in science and economics this year.
But we cannot drive into the future looking in the rear view mirror, Unions, business, and government need to come together and make a plan to sail America in a new direction for the 21st century . And we cannot wait for change to come from Washington DC. We need to be the voices that create the winds of change that fill the sails and blow our nation's capital in a new direction. We need to stand up and speak out, so America's greatest gift - the American Dream of parents working hard so their kids can be better off than they are - endures.
Americans are looking for leadership - a hand up not a hand out.
On my desk is a figurine on a balance bar. On its base is this statement, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." Let's put America back on track, and make this A Country That Works.
And if not us, then who?
And if not now, then when?