| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo quarrel. | ||
|
unidentified
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This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | |
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join political playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
| Ceasefire, this fall, on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler speaks here about the role of unions in today's political and economic climate and stresses the need to fight back against the Trump administration's policies. | ||
| She also highlights Americans' continued trust in unions. | ||
| Good morning, brothers and sisters, union family, and everyone in this country who works for a living. | ||
| I'm Liz Schuler, president of the AFL-CIO. | ||
| We are America's unions, 63, representing nearly 15 million workers across every industry and every type of job. | ||
| If you wake up every morning thinking about how to make it in this economy, how to find a good job, build a career, pay the bills, put food on the table for your family, and live and retire with dignity, we're fighting for you every day. | ||
| This time each year, we come together to remind this country: Labor Day is our day. | ||
| It belongs to all working people. | ||
| It's not about back-to-school specials and mattress sales. | ||
| It's about the people who will show up to work on Monday, long before the doors open, cleaning the floors and stocking the shelves. | ||
| The teachers who will use their day off to put together lesson plans for the new school year. | ||
| The nurses and first responders and restaurant servers and flight attendants and fast food workers who won't get a holiday come Monday morning, who will put on their uniforms for just another day on the job because they know their communities and their families need them. | ||
| Labor Day is about what those workers and what all workers deserve. | ||
| Now, I travel the country a lot, and everywhere I go, people ask me, How are workers feeling out there? | ||
| Where do we stand on things? | ||
| So, two years ago, we started a new tradition to come together every year for a real and honest talk about the state of our unions. | ||
| This is a moment unlike those past two years, because this is a moment unlike any in the history of our labor movement and our country. | ||
| I'm here at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., what we proudly call the House of Labor, two blocks from the White House. | ||
| And outside this building, there are 2,000 federal troops on the ground, blocking peaceful streets, harassing working people, costing American workers as taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. | ||
| Money that could be expanding health care, funding our schools, or housing those on our streets. | ||
| And it's just one more example of what I've heard from workers again and again these past six months. | ||
| Where is the common sense? | ||
| Where are the lower costs? | ||
| My groceries, my rent, my medicine. | ||
| Why are my job, my family, my future, my community, the services I count on, suddenly being threatened and ripped away? | ||
| Every year we think about a word that captures the state of the unions at this given moment. | ||
| Strong, rising, whatever it may be. | ||
| This year, there's only one possible answer. | ||
| The state of the unions, the state of working people in this country, is under attack. | ||
| Think if this is a president who really wanted to empower workers, he wouldn't have just stripped 700,000 people of their collective bargaining rights. | ||
| The list of laid-off federal workers continues to grow. | ||
| Administration's sweeping cuts to the federal workforce have dealt an especially hard blow to the nation's veterans. | ||
| As a veteran, honestly, it concerns me on whether or not I'm going to be able to receive the quality of health care that I've earned. | ||
| My 80-year-old mom has called me crying from worrying about what is happening to the Social Security Administration. | ||
| Rose's reduction in force at NIOSH isn't just a staffing cut, it's a direct attack on every single worker in this country. | ||
| Now, imagine every day you come to work, every morning you get up, you dress, and you come to work. | ||
| You don't know if that's going to be your last day at work. | ||
| We've seen greedy CEOs and billionaires before, haven't we? | ||
| What we've never seen is those same CEOs and billionaires being handed full control of our government, our democracy, our lives. | ||
| 13 billionaires in one picture, four of whom now run agencies of our federal government. | ||
| If you've ever met someone who says that the word oligarchy is too confusing or too complicated, well, you can explain it in that one photo. | ||
| This is a government of, by, and for the CEOs and the billionaires. | ||
| But we also need to recognize it's been that way for a long time now. | ||
| Your dollar is not quite your dollar that it was two years ago. | ||
| And I see these working people in there struggling. | ||
| I am one of those people that it's going to cost me $1,200 more. | ||
| Everything just keeps going up and up and up, and we need more benefits to keep going. | ||
| He's supposed to have insurance their calls to go and go up. | ||
| Attacking my financial freedom. | ||
| We're always looking for raises to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of living in New York City. | ||
| More and more people are going to be out on the street because they're not going to be able to afford it. | ||
| All it means is taking more money from us and giving it to corporations. | ||
| Hopefully, going forward, you know, prices do go down in certain areas, but at the end of the day, I still got to go to work, you know, and that's not going to change. | ||
| These struggles, the precarity, the uncertainty people are living with when it comes to their rent, their health care, their fears about AI and the future, it didn't start with Donald Trump. | ||
| It started with a system that has left people behind for a long time now, that has put CEOs over construction workers, billionaires over baristas, that has gutted labor rights over the past 40 years, and not a coincidence, saw income inequality rise to its highest level ever. | ||
| FDR once reminded us: democracies have gone away in other great nations, not because people hated democracy, but because people gave up liberty in the hopes of getting something to eat. | ||
| If we push people to the edge to the point where they can't afford groceries or health insurance or a place to call home, we can't be surprised when they turn against the system they're living in. | ||
| This is the choice working Americans have been given: chaos or the same broken status quo. | ||
| An authoritarian who tells us only he can make things great again, or convincing ourselves everything is already great while black women make 64 cents on the dollar and young people struggle to pay rent, or a CEO makes 7,000 times what his workers make. | ||
| That has led us to this moment. | ||
| We wanted cheaper groceries and we got tanks in our streets. | ||
| We wanted affordable health care. | ||
| We got 16 million Americans who are about to be kicked off their coverage. | ||
| We wanted jobs you could raise a family on, but that's not what we got. | ||
| We got more American workers laid off last month than any month since the start of the pandemic. | ||
| The American people said loud and clear: unions are the one thing we agree on. | ||
| Instead, this administration attacked us and the workers who keep this country going. | ||
| Veterans like Sharnice Mundel, who served this country in the Air Force, came home and kept serving in our government for years to make sure retired post office workers got their benefits until an email came in one night in March at 11 p.m. telling her she was fired along with thousands of others. | ||
| Lumbermill workers like Luis Gomez-Garcia in upstate New York, who did everything he was supposed to do, got a work permit, got a job supporting his family and his two young daughters, until immigration officers showed up at the mill and arrested him without cause and pulled his daughters out of school. | ||
| Federal workers like Derek Copeland in Georgia at the Department of Agriculture, who made sure food was being imported into the country and was safe to eat until one morning in February when he got a letter saying his employment wasn't in the public interest. | ||
| This administration wants us to look at stories like these and say, oh, it's not my job, my livelihood. | ||
| Maybe there will be more for me if someone else loses. | ||
| They want to convince working people that we are each other's enemies, that we need to fight one another to land a good job, to find a home in a safe neighborhood, that only so many of us can live with dignity at the same time. | ||
| We are not each other's enemies. | ||
| We are each other's neighbors, friends, co-workers. | ||
| We are each other's brothers, sisters, and family. | ||
| Whether we work for the public sector sector, whether we are immigrants or fourth generation, whether we are gay, straight, trans, black, white, blue state, red state, we are all suffering under the same broken system. | ||
| It doesn't have to be this way. | ||
| Things can be different if we build real sustained power that shows up every day, not just once every four years. | ||
| Politics alone won't fix what's wrong with this country. | ||
| Not when there are members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who are more worried about their reelection than they are helping working families, who would happily let you get automated out of a job if it meant they got another campaign check from the CEO doing it. | ||
| Republicans aren't going to save us. | ||
| Democrats aren't going to save us. | ||
| Working people are going to save ourselves. | ||
| For the past few months, we've been in the field conducting our annual poll of working people, and we asked workers of every age, political background, sector of the economy, how they feel about their lives right now. | ||
| Who do they trust? | ||
| Who do they believe in? | ||
| And who do they not trust? | ||
| Here's what we heard. | ||
| People have lost faith in every institution in this country. | ||
| Our political parties, our Supreme Court, our religious institutions, corporations, our media, every single one of them is underwater right now in terms of trust. | ||
| Yet nearly two-thirds of this country believes in unions. | ||
| And when you ask the most vulnerable workers in this country, the workers who say, I'm living on the edge, I don't have time for politics because I'm too busy trying to get by. | ||
| I just want someone, somewhere to help me build a better life. | ||
| Those workers still have faith in one single thing. | ||
| 75% of those workers say they believe in unions. | ||
| They believe that joining a union is their best shot to build a better life, a more secure life, a brighter future for themselves and their families. | ||
| They believe because they've seen us deliver again and again. | ||
| When this administration ripped away the collective bargaining rights of 1 million of our brothers and sisters in the federal workforce, jobs that families and communities count on, we organized. | ||
| We took them to court. | ||
| We rallied outside our elected officials' offices. | ||
| We shaped legislation that politicians from both sides of the aisle rallied around, the Protect America's Workforce Act that would restore those rights. | ||
| We are one step away from passing that legislation. | ||
| And so to every member of Congress watching out there, let's get it done. | ||
| When this administration fired federal workers who have made up our civil service for decades, disproportionately hurting black workers and communities of color, cutting the programs so many working families depend on, telling our educators, don't talk about Harriet Tubman and the Tuskegee airmen in our schools. | ||
| Our teachers, our civil servants, our members all over this country stood up and said, hell no. | ||
| And when this administration came for immigrant workers, when our brothers and sisters who have contributed to this country, contributed to our communities, were snatched off the streets, disappeared, and detained in for-profit prisons without charges or due process, we rallied around them. | ||
| We trained an entire grassroots army of union activists, organizers, and members so we could exercise our constitutional rights and fight for their release and keep them here with their families where they belong. | ||
| That ability to take on power, to create and build power of our own, it's what unions do. | ||
| It's in our blood. | ||
| It's how we won the weekend and paid vacation and the eight-hour workday and Social Security. | ||
| It's why in states with the most unionized workers, all workers make more money and more people have health care and there are greater investments in our schools. | ||
| It's why workers all over this country know it's better in a union. | ||
| And it's why right now we are the ones to lay out the vision for where this country needs to go. | ||
| To rally people around common sense values we can all agree on. | ||
| To unite working people around the freedom, fairness, and security that we all deserve. | ||
| Now next Monday is not just Labor Day, it's the start of Labor Week. | ||
| Marches and rallies and trainings, hundreds of thousands of working people coming together from this coming weekend to next, kicking off the single biggest year of action from now until next Labor Day in the history of this movement. | ||
| Every single thing working people have won for ourselves in this country's history. | ||
| It's not because we asked those in power, it's not because they were handed to us. | ||
| It's because we fought for them relentlessly by organizing and mobilizing and using our collective power. | ||
| The standard at the turn of the 20th century was a 60-hour work week until workers in Chicago refused to bow down to the greed of their bosses. | ||
| Discrimination was the norm until the labor movement and civil rights movements came together and fought for the Civil Rights Act and Fair Labor Standards Act. | ||
| They told immigrants and women workers we had to choose between liberty and getting something to eat. | ||
| Until in 1912 up in Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile workers said, we refused to make that choice and the Bread and Roses movement was born. | ||
| That same spirit is alive today now more than ever. | ||
| I see it. | ||
| I see it in working people all over this country. | ||
| In the workers this past year who have fought and won their own union and seized their power. | ||
| Whole foods workers in Philadelphia, public school educators in Virginia, Wells Fargo branch workers in Florida, EV battery workers in Tennessee, nursing home workers in Alabama, and thousands more. | ||
| Look, there will always, always be people who try to divide us, who tell us we're up against too much money, too much power. | ||
| And they might be right if we go it alone. | ||
| But when we come together, incredible things happen. | ||
| So if you believe in common sense, no matter what political party you belong to, if you're ready to stand up to the CEOs and the billionaires, if you're ready to fight for your sister or your brother beside you, if you're ready to build the kind of country that workers deserve, come join us. | ||
| Happy Labor Day. | ||
| Congress returns Tuesday from its summer recess facing a government funding deadline. | ||
| Lawmakers in both chambers must pass legislation to extend funding past September 30th to avert a government shutdown. | ||
| The House will continue working later in the week on legislation funding the Energy Department and water development projects for next year. | ||
| The Senate is expected to vote to advance 2026 defense programs and policy legislation authorizing $925 billion for the Pentagon and the Energy Department's nuclear weapons programs. | ||
| House members will consider their version of the National Defense Authorization Act, also known as the NDAA. | ||
| That'll happen during the week of September 8th. | ||
| Watch live coverage of the House on C-SPAN. | ||
| See the Senate on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| And a quick reminder that all of our congressional coverage is available on our free video app, C-SPAN Now, and our website, c-span.org. | ||
| I saw you interviewed the other night. | ||
| I watched it about 2 o'clock in the morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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There was a little thing called C-SPAN, which I don't know how many people were watching. | |
| Don't worry, you were in prime time too, but they happen to have a little rerun. | ||
| Do you really think that we don't remember what just happened last week? | ||
| Thank goodness for C-SPAN, and we all should review the tape. | ||
|
unidentified
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Everyone wonders when they're watching C-SPAN what the conversations are on the floor. | |
| I'm about to read to you something that was published by C-SPAN. | ||
| There's a lot of things that Congress fights about, that they disagree on. | ||
|
unidentified
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We can all watch that on C-SPAN. | |
| Millions of people across the country tuned into C-SPAN. | ||
| That was a made-for-C-SPAN moment. | ||
| If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and trying to understand their perspective and find common ground. | ||
| And welcome for to everybody watching at home. | ||
| We know C-SPAN covers this live as well. | ||
|
unidentified
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We appreciate that. | |
| And one can only hope that he's able to watch C-SPAN on a black and white television set in his prison cell. | ||
| This is being carried live by C-SPAN. | ||
| It's being watched not only in this country, it's being watched around the world right now. | ||
| Mike said before I happened to listen to him, he was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's a big upgrade, right? | |
| American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| This weekend, as America celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026, join American History TV for its new series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of our founding. | ||
| This week at 1 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, historian Lindsay Chervinsky, with her book Making the Presidency, talks about second U.S. President and Massachusetts favorite son, John Adams. | ||
| The event was held at the Boston Athenaeum. | ||
| At 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, Lebanon Valley College professor James Broussard on how the actions by the British government, such as the Stamp Act and stationing British troops in Boston, lead up to the American Revolution. | ||
| Then at 11 p.m. Eastern, journalist Andrew Lawler, author of the book A Perfect Frenzy, discusses the British recruitment of slaves during the American Revolution. | ||
| Also this weekend at 5:30 p.m. Eastern, Joshua Long talks about the Bethlehem Steel Company band, whose members were hired by the company in the early 1900s not as steel workers, but as an industrial musical ensemble and cultural gift to the city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. |