 You have a seat open next to you. Okay, there's a lot of raised hands. I was gonna say, if you have a hand, oh, perfect. If you have a seat open next to you, please raise your hand. If there are people still coming in, we're gonna ask that you come over here to my right. It's a little bit more open here and we wanna keep aisleways clear. But against the wall, there's some room there. So if folks can be moving in, down, and over towards my right. Thank you. We'll get started in just a minute. We just wanna try and help people file in. So please keep moving, find a open space, find a seat. Thank you for helping bring more people in safely and comfortably. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I'm Sarah Hughes. I use she, her pronouns, and I am on staff here at Labor Notes. Being a part of building this conference and movement with you is a tremendous honor. How incredible was this weekend? Let's actually take a quick second. Find someone around you. Maybe you know them, maybe you don't. Turn to them and for just a second, tell them what your favorite session or workshop or connection was. Tell each other, just real quick. What was your favorite? Okay, well now I think I've unleashed something. Great, okay, I encourage debriefs. How beautiful is that though? We can't stop talking to each other. Notes as an organization, a network, and a conference has taken decades to build. Each conference has been our biggest yet, but that isn't because we've hired a couple more staff. And it's not just because the labor movement is gaining steam. It's because we build Labor Notes together. We repeatedly hear the first time I came to Labor Notes, it was just me, but at the next one I brought a couple more people and the one after that I brought a couple more people. A handful of staff could not plan almost 300 panels, workshops, concerts, meetings. We couldn't make sure everyone stays safe, or fed, or comforted, or challenged. Labor Notes grows every conference because we do these things together and for each other. We build connections and friendships and networks. We suggest and plan and recruit for these sessions based on things we want to know and things that we've learned and want to share. We analyze our mistakes and we celebrate our victories and we wrestle with the things that are both. And it is almost always complicated. We're not able to win all the things we need yet. And that is going to take more power. For more power we will need more organizing conversations, more listening, more relationship building, more strategy bringing in more and more people to our movement. We will disagree on how to do this, but we can build a place where those disagreements lead to stronger and more strategic movements. We are honored to be in this fight with you. Thank you. And now for our incredible performers and speakers. I'm gonna launch right into the first we have Be Young You. I hope everyone is leaving the Labor Notes Conference today fired up with inspiration and with some new action plans percolating in your head. Be Young You is a great example of that. Two years ago he and some other teachers from Portland, Oregon were here at the Labor Notes Conference strategizing about how to fire up their union. Well, they did. Be Young is now on the executive board of the Portland Association of Teachers along with Angela Bonilla who you heard from Friday night. And last year they built a powerful contract campaign and went on strike for almost four weeks to force the school district to deal with mold, rats, building temperatures and above all, class sizes. Be Young wrote this song during the strike and performed it on a truck with speakers blasting right outside the superintendent's house. So keep that in your head as you listen. Please welcome Be Young You. It was a compala that came through at the beginning of right before our strike and was like compala from Oakland Teachers Union. And was like somebody's gotta flip this solidarity forever song. No shade to the original. I just didn't hear any Koreans or POCs up in it. Then it was Cecily from UTLA that came through at the beginning of our strike. And I had this little recording of Cecily that I would play every morning right before hitting the picket lines. And it said, you're gonna be tired, get over it. You'll sleep when you're dead. Then it was Marcia from Minneapolis Federation of Teachers that came through. And in our third or fourth week of the strike, when that folks that are uncomfortable experiencing that discomfort started unraveling, it was Marcia that said, don't blink, don't blink. And I thought about my friend Angela Bonilla sitting up in that bargaining space. 18 hour days, windows, dysfunctional board, dysfunctional district, dysfunctional government. And y'all, Angela was holding it down. Strong black women, strong Afro-Latina women inspiring a crew of educators of color that came up in this union and made space at the table whether we were invited or not. Strong brown women that led the picket lines in the name of special education. The students that look like you, see you. Alicia, where you at? I brought ginger up on stage with us cause we all roll in the car together and your ancestors taught me that. It's always been women of color including my own grandmother teaching me about that resilience, teaching me about the history of colonization in our own family and why we out here on these picket lines fighting for that academic freedom. It's our ancestors. It's the folks that come before us. It's the folks that fight with us. And it's the folks that come after us. That's solidarity forever. How many? I'm here, you're here. Grandma, I'm here and you're here too. Public schools in Portland, Oregon are closed today because of a teacher strike and more than 4,500 educators hit picket lines for the first time in the school district's history. A specials in the ceiling in a rat or two. Letters in the water, but they buy balloons. All scripted, can't pee pee. End up in the closet where the simulcats be. Friends are generous, nepotism evidence. Math created by PPS. It's the labor of black and brown tests that generate the world when you change bonus jets. Black size is 33. All we people are just some deans. Do they care the PPC? Fancy suits in the cool A-C. Fill up like A-B-C. Talk down there, then they leave. Buy a box in the middle of a white dream. Internalized racism ain't my thing. The contract will be a little better. Can't make the water look better. The power we make as a lever is that solidarity forever. It's that solidarity forever. It's that solidarity forever. The power we make as a lever is that solidarity forever. Billionaires like to hide in the castles. Build on our labor like peed in these samples. Take off their wealth, leave them in shambles. Slap them in the sand, don't get the chocolate. Hand them all of us ready for the J-O-B. I like to eat the rich, humanized to see. Good kind of humans from that F.O.U. Every morning watching on the evening news. Every school voucher that I'm a private tizer. Backed by self-interested, right-wing advisors. See Uncle Phil is not paying taxes. Look how that impacts our students and classes. Two big co-brothers, two silver spoons. All the way to the bottom of Tycoons. All we try and do is just teach the truth of the original tune. No contract will pay for the leather. Can't make the water look better. The power will be made as a lever. It's that solidarity forever. It's that solidarity forever. It's that solidarity forever. The power will be made as a lever. It's that solidarity forever. School board is a mockery. Clown show, no democracy. The core of the pursuits regime. So when you strike, you'll need the right team. It sounds like we're part of a tight strain. We're shining, it's like we need vibe energy. On-town, non-school, our community. They will try to not spread the lies. To which we mind, we'll discuss, we'll thrive. We don't cross like an SC, but the C is where we meet. They want us fighting like it's who or me. So speak to truth till it all comes to an end. We are connected by soothing screams. Public schools for all. Water will pay for better. No contract will pay for the leather. Can't make the water look better. The power will be made as a lever. It's that solidarity forever. It's that solidarity forever. Here's Local 90 in Des Moines, Iowa as part of a slate of all new reform officers who swept out the incumbents in fall 2022. He had been a part-time inside worker at UPS for 26 years and was actually in the historic strike at UPS back in 1997. The story of his slate, Teamsters for Action, shows how rank-and-file reformers can not only win elections, but then put into practice the changes they promised. Milano. Two years ago, I was a shop steward on the twilight soar inside the UPS hub in Des Moines, Iowa. I kept the union presence inside the warehouse as best I could, handling grievances without much support from my local. Like other committed union members, I was heartbroken at the direction of our union. We watched as our membership shrank, we accepted concessions and lost member engagement. A few of us active stewards got together and volunteered to rebuild our local by signing up members of the gates, but we were rebuffed by our officers. I wasn't at the last labor notes convention, but Tanner Fisher, a UPS package car driver in my building attended, and he came back levitating with excitement. He was inspired by conversations with other troublemakers and by the running for union office class. He said, Alano, you have to run for office. And I said, Tanner, I'm 25 years in and on my way to retirement. You should run for the union office. We went back and forth on that for a while until we both decided that we'd run together. We kicked off our campaign at the gates outside of UPS in 2022, exactly a year before contract expiration. We worked with TDU to run our local election campaign in parallel with the UPS contract campaign and moved our members into action, and we couldn't have done that without TDU. We called ourselves Teamsters for Action and we were at the gates constantly, preparing, or representing members of stewards and now as leaders in the fight for a strong contract. For members who never saw their business agents, we were the union. Our UPS barn was over half of our local, so we could have just campaigned where we were strong, but we didn't set out to transform local 90 halfway. We were there to do this thing and we were there to do it 100%. We built a team that represented every shift in our hub and we made plans to visit every shop in our local. We hit 20 different parking lots, gathering information for every shift change. We took every vacation day we had and put it towards a consistent presence of the gates. We had hundreds of conversations one-on-one with our members. The message was simple. Just like you see us here right now, you'll see us at your barns listening to the issues and working together to make our union stronger. We won our election by historic landslide victory with the record member turnout. Members were ready for change and we secured 81% of the vote. Our slate took office January 2023 while we were learning the ropes. We had to handle a years long grievance backlog, negotiate our biggest contracts and build a UPS contract campaign and make good on our promises to visit every member at every shop. At UPS, we held parking lot rallies with rank and file members from every classification. We were clear with the company that we were preparing to strike. We were prepared to run a 24-7 operation with strike captains on every shift. When we settled the contract, we ended two tier for drivers, won a massive raise for both full-time and part-timers and got major increases to our pension fund. Our next major mission was our Pepsi contract and winning. The feedback we hear is that the difference has been night and day. Membership total and our local. This is how a fighting union is built, uniting members around the causes that matter to them. We're demanding changes. Workers have been told as impossible and we're winning. When we raise workers' confidence and expectations, there's nothing we can't accomplish together. We're going to keep on going until we fulfill local 90s 120-year-old mission to unite our members, organize the unorganized. We're standing up to greedy corporations and taking what our members deserve. Thank you, Labor Notes. Give it up for Alano De La Rosa. Teamsters local 90. Kate Ziegler used to be the voice of the Canadian Lotto. That's right, that was her voice on TV, radio and online. She made commercials for Toyota for MasterCard, but after the ad agencies walked away from the bargaining table two years ago and locked the commercial actors out of union work, she became a voice for democratic fighting unionism. An actor's union like Kate belongs to may seem glamorous, but that doesn't tell the whole story of thousands of entertainment tradespeople from lead actors to stunt people to voice actors like Kate, that's right, who count on union protections for sustainable careers and retirement. When Kate and her fellow workers were faced with being locked out of work, they worked together to change their union from the bottom up. I've gotten to work with them on their journey here, our cap. They are labor notes super students. They have done study groups. They attend every training. They have soaked up everything they can and I am proud to introduce Kate Ziegler. Thank you, Sarah, to the moon and back. Wow, labor notes, you look gorgeous. There is a lot of labor that goes into advertising. Writers, directors, musicians, editors, sound engineers, drivers, caterers, film crews, and actors. As Sarah told you, I'm a voice actor. Since joining the union in 2011, I've recorded over a thousand commercials and worked for most major advertising agencies in the world, which is not as impressive as it sounds because really there are just four multinational holding companies that own the majority of the big advertising agencies in the world. Sound familiar? Four conglomerates worth billions of dollars? As a proud member of the Alliance of Canadian Television and Radio Artists, that work happens under our national commercial agreement, which has provided wage stability, retirement contributions, insurance protection, and safety on set for unionized Canadian actors for 80 years. But in March 2022, actress commercial performers received an email from our union's national president that said, the advertising entities we bargain with were preparing to lock us out. Dumbfounded I thought a lockout, like in baseball? I didn't even know we were bargaining and that email said I was about to lose my job. A few days later, leadership presented a strike authorization vote. It was a last ditch attempt to bolster solidarity, but why were we just finding out now? And what good is a strike authorization if the boss is already prepared to lock you out? The agencies fulfilled their illegal lockout and within weeks, thousands of actors lost their jobs. That was two years ago, this coming April 26th. Now I wish I was up here to tell you the story of how we won, but instead I'm gonna tell you the story of how we taught ourselves to fight. How 12 journeymen actors, transformed into a group of take no shit troublemakers for the creative working class. This is the story of the rank and file caucus of actor performers. Initially we didn't even know who the agreement was bargained with, so I did my own research and distributed it to members. A cabal of advertising agencies in one corner and a faction of corporate players in the other think big bank, big pharma, big auto. Just before the contract expired, that corporate faction signed the agreement, but they don't actually employ us, the agencies do. A contract for contract's sake can't hide a decimated jurisdiction. We had to fight for access to the proposals, but eventually we learned that the agencies had sent ACTRA 60% wage cuts. And it opt out clauses when the median income of an ACTRA performer is just $15,000. Soon a network of comrades became visible. We'd see one another on Zoom calls. We'd be like, hey, you've seen pissed off like me, let's talk. That antiquated trust us model wasn't working for us. So we started meeting on our own and sought out resources to help us understand what was going on. Labor notes was one of them. They knew exactly what we were going through and how the union had broken our hearts. Initially I didn't think I had the right to be at workshops like these. How could my struggle possibly compare with that of auto workers, of nurses, of migrant farmers? But at labor notes, we learned the capitalism waits for no one and the class struggle affects us all. I think I'm gonna go over, Sarah. Our impulse to build a community around what was happening was the seed for a grassroots member led caucus. We made a commitment to one another that this union, our union ACTRA is ours to fight for and the best vehicle we have to assert our power. To build that power we were taught to get out there and talk to members, listen and let them vent. Being locked out is vicious, grief inducing. I'll never forget the first time I had a organizing conversation with a member who was deep in despair. After an hour she said, you know what, I will come to your meeting and I'm gonna bring some friends. The lie we are told about apathy is that members don't care. And the truth is they care a great deal. We just so rarely feel that it will make any kind of difference. Before we went public with RCAP, I was invited to join the bargaining team. Like clockwork, I was sent a non-disclosure agreement and found myself trapped in a closed bargaining process that betrayed everything I stood for. So in our first big swing, RCAP presented union officials with a petition on bargaining reform. In 30 days we collected nearly 700 signatures. That's seven times more than we needed. But it was rejected on the grounds that rank and file members don't have the right to determine the bargaining process. Yeah, now I was promptly removed from the bargaining team for being untrustworthy. But the upshot, I was freed. Now that closed process led to a tentative agreement built by our union, including a 20% wage cut. We heard it isn't perfect, but we can meet them in the middle. Now here's the problem. When an employer seeks 60%, they no longer qualify for our fucking collaboration. So RCAP ran a vote no campaign. We were scared. We'd never done anything like that before, but from labor notes we learned. A vote no campaign is the single most effective thing that union members can do to empower the bargaining team to get back to the table. And it's a signal to the employer that members aren't gonna take a shitty deal. The agreement passed, the agreement passed, but none of the locking out agencies came back to the table because no amount of concessions is enough for union busting employers. Trying to appease them won't end our lockout, nor will it be sufficient in the fight facing all workers against AI and the criminal consolidation of wealth. So we got clear with our members and built RCAP's vision for a transparent democratic union. We wanna shut down exploitive non-union sets and organize those performers to join our fight. Then came our local council elections, 24 seats elected every two years. We launched a reform slate with eight core candidates, held big open meetings with mentors, listening parties in real life, made buttons and flyers and a kick ass social media campaign. No voter list from the union, no problem. We had our own list from the petition because we've learned that doing it builds it. In the end, we won all eight of those seats. We doubled voter turnout in our union from 13% to 28%. The highest in our union's history. Myself and two others were elected as vice president. We sent four people up to the national board where all the bargaining secrets are kept. But I'm not here to sugarcoat a lemon. Getting elected has been very challenging. We wanna fight the boss and not just for commercial actors to build our union's power for all performers. Instead, we find ourselves battling the status quo. We have nearly built a majority voting block, but we're still learning how to wield this tool of counsel so we can end the lockout. And another thing, we have to keep the heart of the rank and file movement pumping and it's hard to do both. Last month, one of our comrades stood up and told counsel, I've been a member for nearly 30 years and never felt like one until I came to an RCAT meeting. What an honor. What an honor to know that if you do this work, you really do it, you get to be part of something that people have never felt before. That's the power of democracy. And as a leader, I work against the fable or the idea of individual power that leaves really well-intentioned people standing at a brick wall, banging not a hammer, but their head against it. When what you really need to do and what labor notes teaches all of us to do is go out and talk to more workers, go get a thousand hammers. Anyone who has done this work knows you cannot do it alone. I sure as hell have an RCAT. We're really small, but I want you to stand up for a second. Stand up, labor notes. We do this work. One thing's for us, the thousands of community workers who have been having their work for two years, leaving their homes, losing their insurance, because all the people looked at 2% of the budget and said, that's too much. So what do we do? Thank you, labor notes. Thank you, Chicago. I have also been asked to make two quick notes. Feels anticlimactic, I'm sorry. If folks in the back, there's still quite a bit of room over here on the side. If a couple dozen people in the back could carefully move down, there's a whole big section. I see somebody raising their hand over there. Yeah, thank you. There's a whole bunch of room. Thank you, that would be great. We're just trying to make sure people can still get out there. People have trains and planes to catch. Thanks so much. Also, I've been asked, if you are using interpretation equipment, please do return that at the end of this session in the back of the room. Okay, and with that, we are so excited to welcome Cesar Orta. He is the secretary general of a union of 4,000 auto workers and an Audi plant in Puebla, Mexico. I can't even get to the good part yet. They're owned by Volkswagen and we know what just happened to Volkswagen in Tennessee. Don't wait. That's right. Cesar's union overwhelmingly rejected a miserly wage increase earlier this year and struck for three weeks behind the slogan, we are workers not beggars. Strikes are rare in Mexico's auto sector, where workers find themselves not only under the thumbs of their bosses, but of corrupt employer protection unions with deep links to the country's political elite. But the union at Audi is one of Mexico's young independent fighting unions and we welcome them to labor notes as we build a stronger labor movement across North America. Thank you. First of all, thank you very much for the invitation to be here. Thank you to Labor Notes, the Solidarity Center and the UAW. I'm so happy and honored to be here with so many women and men ready for and engaged in the fight. La explotación laboral en México y la precarización de los salarios han hecho atractiva la inversión en nuestro país. Sin embargo, así como ustedes luchan por mejorar sus condiciones económicas y laborales, hoy nosotros hacemos esa misma lucha. The exploitation of labor in Mexico and the chronically low wages have made investment in our country attractive. However, just as you are fighting to improve your economic and working conditions, today we are fighting the same fight. Yo vengo del sindicato independiente de trabajadores de Audi México, lo cual representa 4,000 trabajadores automotrices que se formó en el 2016. Después de años de bajos salarios y explotación, lanzamos una huelga en enero de este año en respuesta a un aumento de salario miserable ofresido por la compañía, dijimos somos obreros no limosneros. I come from the independent union of Mexican Audi workers formed in 2016 and representing 4,000 workers. After years of low wages and exploitation, we launched a strike in January of this year in response to a paltry wage increase offered by the company, saying we are workers, not beggars. Fue la primera huelga en el sector automotriz mexicano en décadas, duró 26 días, 26 días de lucha, 26 días de sufrimiento, 26 días de sacrificio, pero donde no nos doblegamos, no nos rajamos, no nos subordinamos a los deseos del patrón. Hoy con gusto y en el plácito les digo, lo logramos, logramos un aumento del 10.2%, un aumento de dos dígitos para la base trabajadora. Lo que la base trabajadora pide es una obligación para nosotros. It was the first strike in the Mexican automotive sector in decades. It lasted 26 days, 26 days of struggle, 26 days of suffering, 26 days of sacrifice, but we did not bend, we did not bow, we did not submit to the boss's will. Today, I'm pleased to tell you that we did it. We achieved an increase of 10.2%, a double digit increase for our workers and what our workers demand, we are obligated to achieve. Sin embargo, estamos todavía muy por debajo de ustedes en los salarios. Un trabajador mexicano gana solo una décima del salario que tienen ustedes aquí en Estados Unidos. Las empresas aprovechan esa parte para que con la distancia y con los salarios bajos, la inversión la hagan en nuestro país. Es momento de luchar, es momento de unirnos para que las empresas de Estados Unidos sigan en Estados Unidos y las de México mejoremos nuestras condiciones. Our wages are still far below yours. A Mexican auto worker earns only 10% of what a U.S. worker earns. These companies are using the distance and low wages to divide us. So that's why we have to unite to keep U.S. jobs in the U.S. and improve the working conditions and salaries of workers in Mexico. Concluyo diciendo que el líder sindical que de verdad representa a los trabajadores es aquel que genera unidad, es aquel que genera solidaridad, espíritu de lucha en su gente, pero sobre todo no olvida de dónde viene y no olvida qué debe hacer. No olvida que está obligado a luchar por su gente con empatía y con corazón y es necesario defender a los trabajadores con sangre. Si es necesario hacerlo así con nuestra propia sangre, así lo vamos a hacer. Muchas gracias. Concluy by saying that union leaders who truly represent workers are the ones who promote unity, solidarity and a fighting spirit in their people. But above all, they don't forget where they came from and don't forget what they have to do. They have to fight for their people with empathy and heart. And if they need to defend workers with their blood, if we need to defend workers with our blood, we will. Next speaker was meant to be here on Friday night. But he picked a different place to be on Friday night. You might have heard in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that was when they had the vote count to unionize the Volkswagen plant. But we don't want to forget that our next speaker's also one of the reasons that we are talking about the 2023 standup strike, the biggest labor event of 2023 for so many reasons. The standup strike kicked auto companies butt and shifted millions of dollars from company pockets to workers' pockets by kneecapping the two-tier system. It showed all of us a different way to strike, a hit-and-run strategy that the suits were not prepared for, and it was a joy to watch them falling all over themselves, scrambling. It showed that a strike that wins a good contract will make other workers want to join. It caused hundreds of non-union auto workers to start contacting the UAW and saying they want a union that wins. And it showed that the existence of a rank-and-file reform movement can make all the difference. If the Unite All Workers for Democracy UAWD caucus had not been there, if it had not boldly taken advantage of the opportunity to run, the UAW would not have new leaders and the standup strike and the victory of Volkswagen and Mercedes next would not have happened. So here is one of those reformers, President of the UAW, Sean Fane. Good afternoon, labor notes. You know, I just finished a breakout we had earlier called Back in the Fight, and talked a lot in there about organizing and how we come together and how we win. I gotta ask a question before I get started. Are there any flight attendants in here? Say one thing about that before I get rolling it. Those of you that don't know, AFA is in a massive organizing campaign against Delta Airlines, the biggest, they're the biggest, most profitable airline on earth. And so, how many of you know in this room, how many of you know someone that works in the airline industry? All right, so all those hands that just went up, you need to reach out to those people and talk to those people and get with your AFA, with the flight attendants, APF, AFPA, I'm sorry, APFA, and talk to them about organizing and the importance of this drive. And every time I fly, I wear a Delta supporter, AFA supporter badge. So we're asking you to do that. When we do this together, this is how we win together, how we organize together, and how we fight together. So I'm gonna get on to my speech now, but I gotta give that speech because I'm not doing my job as a leader if I don't talk about organizing every time I speak. I've got one question for everybody in this room. Are you ready to stand up? It's my honor to join you here today in this bright light of history. Something's happening in this country. Something we haven't seen in a long, long time. The working class is standing up. There's nowhere I'd rather be Friday night than here speaking to all of you because I treasure this moment. But I gotta tell you, there was only one reason I wouldn't be here. And less than 48 hours ago, you all saw what that reason was. 4,000 workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee did what many people said was impossible. Did what the pundits said couldn't be done every time I was interviewed by people when we talked about organizing the South. They would always do an eye roll and say, do you really think you can win in the South? And you know what? Those workers stood up for themselves. That's how we win, and they voted for a union. And you know, I wanna recognize the person in this room because this battle wasn't won by me. It wasn't won by one person, but there is one person that we injected into this drive midway through. And there was a group of people we brought in to really help get things back on track and moving. And that's Carla Villanueva. I don't know where you are in here, Carla. We took a group of organizers and leaders like Carla and we injected them right into the belly of the beast in the American South, where the working class has been shut down and shut out and told to shut up for decades. Where the pundits said that we couldn't win. It's not just Volkswagen over here to talk about today. It's also the 5,000 workers at Mercedes-Benz in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and those brave workers down there are ready to vote for a union. They're gonna be voting in the second week of May, so it's coming before you know it. It's also the 7,000 Daimler workers in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. And I wanna talk about those workers at Daimler because they've told management that if they don't get a deal by next Friday that they're gonna shut shit down. With our victory at Volkswagen, all the workers around the country are speaking with one voice now, and we're telling corporate America that the time is up. And let me assure you this, when I was at Daimler Truck, we came up with the same. And when I say time's up, you say tick-tock, motherfucker. Time's up. That's right. You know, it's not just corporate America that has something to learn from our union family at Volkswagen. It's us. It's the labor movement. 20 years ago, over 20 years ago, actually. I'll say 20, sounds better. You know, I was a young union activist. You know, I was ready to fight the boss. And I was ready to fight for a better life. And I was stunned when I got elected to my first term as a committee member at my plant to find myself in a union with leadership that seemed to have no interest in that fight. And you know, I been known a lot of times when I travel around and speak, I bring my grandmother's Bible with me when I talk about faith. But as a young union activist, I had another Bible. It was this book right here called The Troublemaker's Handbook from Labor Notes. This was my Bible when I became a union rep. And it taught me how to fight the boss, how to fight company unionism all at the same time. And you know, I got a section here flagged and you can see in this thing all the highlights I have in this one section, chapter five, which is dealing with labor management cooperation programs because we were living it in the UAW. This Bible taught me another kind of faith. It taught me faith in the membership. Taught me faith in the working class. And it's that faith that carried the UAW to our new chapter in history. You know, about two years ago, I put my faith in the membership of the UAW and I ran for office. And I gotta say this, I was supported by and I would not be standing here today as president of the UAW if it wasn't for the bad ass members of UAWD, a Reform Caucus. And I'm a proud member of UAWD. And as UAWD said then, we're putting an end to company unionism, an end to concessions, an end to corruption, an end to tears. You know, we also drew inspiration in UAWD. We were inspired by the Teamsters for a Democratic Union and we drew a boatload of inspiration from labor notes. And everybody else who's fought to put the movement back in the labor movement. We put our faith in the membership and the membership spoke. The members chose to end company unionism. The members chose to fight. We took that fight straight to the companies in a big three and we took them on like we've never taken them on before. After years of concessions and give-backs, we put forward very bold demands that we were laughed at for in the beginning. We kept the companies guessing after years of them being given a free pass. We won things nobody thought was possible. And we secured the reopening of a plant right here almost in Chicago and Belvedere Assembly after decades of closures. You know, when I took over as president, the electric battery industry was on a race to the bottom starting pay at $16.50 an hour and after seven years, $20 top pay. We went after that. We went after putting that in our master agreements. And again, we laid the groundwork for just transitioning EV. You know, even though we were told it was against the... We killed the wage tiers. We shortened the progression to full pay. We won back cost of living allowance. We ended the abuse attempts. But more than anything, what we want on that contract is we got our union back. We put the membership in charge and we remembered how to fight and we remembered how to win. And then we noticed something after we won all this and after this all happened, after we put the membership back in charge, we started to notice something else. Started out by the dozens, then by the hundreds and then by the thousands. Non-union auto workers were reaching out to join our movement. You know, I was campaigning for this job. I said a lot that bargaining good contracts leads to organizing success. It goes hand in hand. And so the standup strike, it wasn't just about the big three. It was about the entire working class. And it was about proving one thing, that the working class can win. And we don't win by playing defense or reacting to things. We don't win by playing nice with boss. We don't win by telling our members what to do, what to say, or how to say it. We win by giving working class people the tools, the inspiration, and the courage to stand up for themselves. You know, in the 1940s, during World War II, the UAW members were building B-24 Liberator Bombers at Willow Run Plant. Those bombers were a big piece in the arsenal of democracy. They helped defeat the fascist who were seeking to divide and conquer the working class. The UAW was responsible for creating the arsenal of democracy that led the U.S. to winning the war. And I said this at Willow Run on that day when the president visited us on the picket line. That, you know, we found ourselves facing a new enemy, a new authoritarian threat. But it wasn't some faraway country. It wasn't some other state. It was right here at home in our workplaces, and that enemy is corporate greed. And for decades, corporate greed has threatened to destroy the working class. Workers are told that their rights end at the workplace door and to shut up or starve. For decades, workers have been led to believe there's no other way. Led to believe that resistance is futile. Class war has been waged on us for decades, that it's unwinnable. Workers have been led to believe that working class people don't have the power, the will, or the courage to fight back. So today, from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Chicago, Illinois, we say, hell no! We say the working class is the arsenal of democracy and the workers are the liberators. And going back to organizing again, I wouldn't be doing my job. We had these shirts made up, especially for this movement. We just opened, shamefully to say this, an online store at the UAW, because we haven't had one, to sell some swag. The first thing we created was this right here, these shirts that tie in that significance, that have a bomber on here that says UAW and liberators below it. And on the back says the working class is the arsenal of democracy. So if you wanna support organizing, all the proceeds from our UAW website go to organizing. And the one thing I've seen throughout this and the one thing we know throughout this fight, it's not a CEO that's gonna save us. It's not a president that's gonna save us. It's not me and it's not you. It's us and it's a united working class is how we're gonna win. If we lose this war, it's by falling for the same tricks we've been falling for my entire life. And that's letting the billionaire class and the corporate class divide us. They try to divide us over race. They try to divide us over who we love. They try to divide us over borders. They wanna villainize some destitute, poverty-stricken person for trying to find a better life. They're not our enemy. They're our family. So I'm telling you today, we've gotta stand united. And when I look around this room, I see everything we need to win this war. I see working class people from all walks of life ready to fight for democracy, democracy on the job, democracy in our unions, democracy in our industries. In this room, we have everything we need to win. And there's no one smarter. There's no one stronger. And there's no one better and there's not a better army in this world than the working class. Over the last six months in the UAW, we've been moving mountains. So I have to ask you all again, are you ready to stand up? All right, so let's get to it, let's get out there, let's move more mountains as a united move, but thank you. What a challenge to end on. And I hope we all take that to heart that this is not just about what happens in these few days, but what we take back. The conversations we start having with each other, with our coworkers, the fights we pick with our bosses. What are you gonna do when you get home to come back and talk about and share and push forward next conference? To that end, I just have a couple of thank yous and quick announcements. Obviously this cannot happen without the help of so many people. We really do build this together. First, I wanna thank you all for carrying this movement, for putting in so much work. Give it up for yourselves, labor notes participants. Thank you to our international folks who came. Our fights are interconnected and we learn from each other. Thank you to our interpreters who make that possible. We communicated with each other in so many languages this weekend, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, French, American Sign Language and others. I also just a quick note, our interpreter who is up here, Joanna Parker, is the daughter of one of the founders of Labor Notes. Particularly sweet to have her here with us. Carry on that work. I wanna thank the Labor Heritage Foundation. How amazing was it to have the Great Labor Arts Exchange? This is the second conference we've partnered with them and we hope to continue the tradition moving forward. It's become a beautiful partnership. We want to thank the folks who have made this financially possible. We raised so much money leading up to the conference to bring workers here. It would not have been possible to have this group of people here without that. If you gave money to help people buy plane tickets, train tickets, hotel rooms, scholarships, thank you, thank you, thank you. Last night, we held our troublemaker awards and our fundraising dinner. We honored inspiring troublemakers. We honored our friends who are no longer with us and we raised over $65,000. We had folks give individuals and organizations who gave what they could, big amounts, small amounts, and we are humbled by all of it. We thank the hundreds of volunteers who worked the registration table, the welcome table, the t-shirt table, who directed traffic, who gave directions, who ran materials to and from workshop rooms, who set up and took down projectors and screens. We had so many people, hundreds of people, helping out this weekend. It could not have happened without them. Thank you to the childcare workers for their essential labor. Our union hotel staff here at the Hyatt Unite here, and AV staff at Angkor, the groups who collaborated with us on actions downtown, a rise in others, the Illinois Labor History Society for the Labor History Tour. If you were able to catch that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Moving as we go home, there are ways to stay involved. Their labor notes is not just a conference. You can become a subscriber to our magazine, read stories like the ones you heard this weekend and then write your own for us. Get in contact, ask for help, keep us posted on how you're using these skills. We put on trainings and troublemaker schools in different cities. Help us build it when we come to your town. See you, Buffalo. We're gonna come to our online trainings and events. There are so many ways to get in contact. Follow us on social media, contribute. We're so excited to stay in touch and continue to connect each other up in between conferences. Okay, next, okay, a couple of last announcements and we are wrapping up. We have come together. We now must depart. The airport shuttle will help us do that. It is leaving every 15 minutes. Going straight to O'Hare, can catch it out front. There is a lost in found. I really appreciate people's dedication to hydration based on the number of water bottles we have. That's in the office behind the registration. You can grab someone there. And interpretation equipment, again, please return to the back. Thank you again for taking care of each other. I saw people feeding each other, wearing masks to help us stay safe. Please go home and take care of yourselves. And we'll wrap us up. We have one final tremendous closing. We've invited Joe Jenks to lead us in solidarity forever. Joe is an outstanding singer and songwriter who has performed around the world in a countless picket lines and union halls. He's joined by Lynn Marie Smith, the Motown Diva. Solidarity forever reminds us that workers have the power to change the world. And that the root of that power is something so simple, our promise to have each other's backs. So please welcome two members of the Traveling Musicians Union, Local 1000, Joe Jenks and Lynn Marie Smith. You all know this, please sing it with us. This inspiration through the workers' blood shall run.