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Address of International President Edwin D. Hill
City Club of Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
April 30, 2004
View webcast of event

Thank you, Steve. Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen -- Brothers and Sisters it is indeed a privilege for me to be here in this great city and to have the honor to address this organization that has been a bastion of free speech for 92 years.

Of all our precious freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, the freedom of speech requires the most vigilance -- because it has the power to cause the most discomfort. I have seen individuals and organizations from across the political spectrum give in to the impulse to attempt to silence their critics. Seeking to GAG ones opponents is far easier in the short run than tolerating open and rational debate, -- although it also a surefire recipe for long-term disaster. So I salute the City Club for its unyielding devotion to its principles and for providing a forum to countless speakers of every imaginable stripe over its long, distinguished history and ESPECIALLY TODAY -- when FEAR is a daily fact of life throughout the world.

When I looked at the list of those who have stood at this podium over the years, I must admit that I felt a little overwhelmed. But I learned along time ago not to pretend to be something Im not -- so what you have here is a union electrical worker from Beaver County, Pennsylvania, with a slightly different job to do at the present time. Beaver County is not all that far from here -- in the area where you stop seeing Browns pennants and start seeing Steelers signs and we share many similarities with Cleveland. And if theres one thing that wont get you very far in the Cleveland/Pittsburgh corridor -- its putting on airs.

I stand here today a person who -- like most of you -- play a number of roles in my life. Im a husband, father, a grandfather and -- I am a man of faith. Like my father before me, Im what we call in our trade a journeyman inside wireman -- what you would call an electrician -- and have been for more than 40 years. But Im also something else. The day I walked into the apprenticeship program at Local 712 in Beaver for the first time, I also became a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, again, following my father, uncle and many friends. I became -- A TRADE UNIONIST, -- and thats a role that has defined me -- at least to my friends and close acquaintances -- for the better part of my life. In 1964, I was elected to my first position in the local union. In 1982, I had the honor first of working on the international staff of the Brotherhood and then went on to hold elected office -- including my current position at the head of the union. In all that time, being a part of the IBEW helped me put food on the table, -- helped me reap the rewards of hard work, -- gave me time with my family and a little money to do some of the things that people do in their daily lives. In my lifetime, I have had an effect on the working lives of thousands of men and women.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the IBEW, we are a large, diverse union with about 750,000 active members. Many of you may think of us as a building trades union, and we are but we also much more. We have a strong base in the utility industry, in telecommunications, in television and movie production, in the railroads, some government workers, and numerous specialized occupational categories.

We also have base in manufacturing, but I am sad to say, that branch of our membership has fallen dramatically over the past decade.

I tell you all this to give you a sense of who I am and where I come from. I would like to speak today from that perspective. I am not an economist nor am I a philosopher, but I have spent most of my life working to make life better for people who pull wire, climb utility poles, splice cable, operate factory equipment, take customer calls, operate television cameras and fix electric locomotives, among many other jobs.

Most of the public speaking I do is confined to organized labor or groups within the industries we represent. Since I am outside that spectrum today, I would like to ask you to ponder a couple of things about your life.

• Did you grow up in a household where at least one member of the family was a member of a trade union?

• Looking back -- would you say that you grew up in a family that you would consider to be middle class?

• If you think back -- do you believe that the middle class of those years is the same as what is considered the middle class of today?

I ask this because the key word on everyones lips these days is -- jobs. Its a powerful word, one that sums up peoples hopes and dreams for a better life and cuts to the very core of our sense of security and place in life. The media has finally caught on to the jobs crisis in America, and thats good. Those of us in the labor movement wonder what took them so long.

The numbers have gotten so out of whack that they no longer can be ignored. Youve all seen them, whether its a pie chart on the cover of USA Today or a serious analysis in an academic journal. Every day in America, over 85,000 people lose their jobs. Some 14 million are jobless, underemployed or have given up looking for work. Over 43 million have no health insurance. And near 7 million are working, but are still living below the poverty level.

Numbers, of course, never tell the whole story. There are those who sit in their high rises on Wall Street who crunch numbers and assure us that the economy is doing just fine.

I wish those people would get out of their leather chairs and take a walk through the neighborhoods of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Beaver County -- where people stuck in dead end jobs are struggling to keep it together. I wish they would drive through the streets of Bedford Heights or Parma and talk to middle-age parents worrying about becoming victims of downsizing. They and many others wonder how they will send their kids to college or even what future awaits those youngsters if they do earn a degree or -- heaven forbid -- if they choose not to get a degree -- what is their future going to be like?

The bean counters can throw out all the numbers they want. It doesnt really matter if the number of jobs increases or decreases over any given month. We know from the evidence presented to us by our own eyes and ears that the kinds of jobs that sustain families and provide the basis for a large, stable middle class in this country -- are in jeopardy. We know that some of the old rules -- work hard, -- get an education, -- be loyal -- have all been thrown back in our faces.

Much has been said and written about the declining number of union members and with it the weakened clout of organized labor. But of course when the pundits speak of clout, they usually have in mind someone like me who presides over a union -- or as the less charitable would call me -- A UNION BOSS.

But remember those questions I asked a moment ago? There is a direct connection between the weakening of the trade union movement and the undermining of the middle class in this country. The loss of clout is not and never has been about union leaders like me it is about the lost power of working people over their daily lives.

We may disagree on a number of things, but if you dig down past the other thoughts -- you have to admit that something is happening to the middle class in this country. There is a mass exodus of jobs and it is not only the present jobs -- it is the opportunity for future generations to have a chance at the middle class lifestyle that we had. With those lost opportunities goes the tax base of the vast middle class and their employers who provided the necessary revenue to build the interstate highways, support growing school systems and maintain our military strength in short to sustain our country and the communities in which we all live.

The fact of the matter is that the job crisis and the undermining of the middle class are not new in America. Our base has been eroding for years -- under Democratic and Republican administrations. Part of it is due to factors beyond anyones control and part of it -- we ourselves have let happen.

Im sure there were some farsighted professors or think tank experts who predicted some of the factors that have changed our world so profoundly over the past decade. Think for a minute about just two of them -- the incredible explosion of technology and the rapid emergence of a global economy and community.

Is there anything in our lives that technology has not changed? From just-in-time inventory to the transmission of capital, the Internet has put communication -- and with it efficiency and productivity -- in permanent fast-forward. We expect information instantly. We expect to be able to reach anyone, anywhere at any time. It used to take a week to send a picture of your kid to grandma. Now, you can do it with your cell phone right on the spot.

Technology has made many jobs obsolete, much as the "automation" of years past changed assembly lines. The digital revolution made much more output possible with fewer hands. This has been an undeniable byproduct of technological change.

Technology has contributed to the shrinking of the world as well. Instant communication and the rise of media that reach around the globe have put people and cultures in touch with one another in a manner unprecedented in human history.

Technology reduced the dependence on raw materials and put the premium instead on ingenuity. This in turn led to the awakening of the two most populous nations of the world -- China and India, which has transformed the globe. One simply cannot ignore the formidable presence of a work force of several billion-plus. Factor in the potential consumer markets that these two nations represent, and the implications for the global economy and environment are truly staggering.

We have lived through two periods of prosperity in the late 20^th century that perhaps made us lose our perspective -- or even spoiled us. The first was the incredible long run of post-World War II prosperity that saw the creation of the great American middle class. The German and Japanese economies were in ruins. Europe was licking its post-war wounds. The Iron Curtain divided East and West culturally and economically. And as we saw, the Communist nations became economic basket cases. And entire swaths of the globe were stuck in agonizing poverty. It is small wonder that even American factory workers lived like kings with their own cars, their own houses in the expanding suburbs, an education courtesy of the GI bill and an expanding highway system and public university system making mobility -- literally and figuratively -- the norm.

The second, and more recent, period was the economic boom of the 1990s, fueled primarily by the rise of the high tech sector. In retrospect, the era can best be summarized by Alan Greenspans characterization of "irrational exuberance." But in the heady days when people were speculating about a 30,000-point Dow Jones average and even working stiffs were seeing their 401(k) plans expanding beyond their wildest dreams, nothing seemed impossible. But of course, sustaining such times was impossible.

We will probably experience true boom times again at some point, but the reality is that for most of the time, the economy will be on a much slower track, with no shortcuts to wealth and no gimmicks that can substitute for hard work and brains.

In a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger -- with whom I agree maybe five percent of the time -- stated that in the world today, one cannot change things simply by yelling, "Stop!" By that he meant that we couldnt put back in the bottle the various genies that science, technology and communications have unleashed. We cannot outlaw reality or wish away unpleasant facts as the proliferation of nuclear technology, the advances in cloning or the genetic modification of food.

I think that we need to take that concept to heart, especially those of us -- in the people business, which includes labor unions. I have told IBEW audiences that we would not be living up to our responsibility to our members by pretending that we can make the factors of change disappear or turn back time.

So I believe that the mission of a modern trade union is to confront reality, adapt to irreversible change and attempt to stay ahead of the curve through strategic thinking and innovation. Its like part of the oft-cited prayer that asks God for the serenity to accept things we cannot change.

But there is another part to that same prayer -- that asks God for the courage to change things that can be changed. And that remains the -- primary goal -- of the Trade Union movement -- a goal that I believe should be shared by all who want to live in a just and decent society.

I firmly believe that the factors that are cutting the legs out from under the middle class are not beyond our control. They have been accelerated -- AND created -- by conscious decisions on the part of political and corporate leaders.

Let me give you an example from an industry in which 230,000 IBEW members are employed -- electric utilities. Twelve years ago, Congress passed an Energy Policy Act, which started the ball rolling on the process of deregulating and restructuring the electric utility industry. The legislation introduced structural changes in the wholesale market for electricity and paved the way for individual state regulatory agencies to change the way that the regulated utilities did business. The theory was that more companies in power generation and/or distribution would mean competition to the industry, lower prices for industrial and eventually residential consumers and be one big economic boon to everybody.

Anyone recall that happening?

Leading this charge were a new breed of energy marketing companies -- little more than speculators really -- one of which went by the name -- Enron.

Enrons biggest "CON" was convincing California to open up the state to outside power brokers. Thereby breaking up the vertically integrated system wherein the states big utilities controlled all phases of generation, transmission and distribution.

From the very beginning, our union questioned the exorbitant claims of the deregulation advocates. We CAUTIONED that rapid changes in a proven system would create instability in the industry. We WARNED that competitive financial pressures would discourage adequate maintenance of the system and cause the displacement of trained workers needed to ensure reliability. We ARGUED that the concept of universal service to customers would suffer. We said that profiteering companies would eventually gouge consumers. We questioned the impact of deregulation on environmental initiatives undertaken by the utilities.

I can still remember an Enron executive arrogantly telling delegates to the 1997 IBEW Utility Conference that the deregulation train was leaving the station, and we had better be on board. He essentially mocked our concerns.

The train did leave the station all right, and ran straight off the tracks. But -- like any out-of-control locomotive -- it did considerable damage -- causing rolling blackouts, -- bankrupting the state of California, leaving businesses and citizens of the state to pick up the tab. And deregulation was also responsible for blackouts and brownouts throughout the Midwest -- as Im sure all of you remember the massive blackout of August 2003.

We dont like to be the ones to say we told you so, -------- but -- we told you so.

I ask you -- why was no one else looking out for the public interest in all of this? Where was the common sense on the part of the business and political communities to ask tough questions and demand clear answers before jumping off this cliff? The California experience as well as that of other states has put the brakes on numerous further attempts to deregulate and restructure the industry. And we are finding that utility companies are moving back to their old business plans in order to regain some the stability that was jettisoned in the 1990s. Yet, incredibly, the concepts of deregulating and restructuring the utility industry are not dead. It still has some strong adherents in the Congress of the United States and we are fighting to keep some of their misguided ideas out of national energy legislation.

You dont have to be Ralph Nader to see that the energy interests took us for a ride. And their way was made all too easy by the greased wheels of a political money machine. You cant blame them for going for it. As they say in Texas, its just "bidness." But we can wonder why our watchdogs didnt bark, -- our alarms didnt go off, -- or why the public was too apathetic to listen.

Now lets consider the issue of trade -- or at least what passes for trade these days. Im sure most of you in this room think they grasp the concept of trade. For some of you it may go back to your days of swapping baseball cards on the playground. Ill trade you two Yogi Berras for a Ted Williams. Or I guess in Cleveland, I should say that Id swap a Bob Feller for two Al Rosens. Either way, I have something, you want; you have something I want, so we trade. Each gets something of value in the deal.

It used to work that way among nations. And in those days, unions were pretty strong on the free trade side of the argument, in the days when the world was hungry for our goods.

In the 1950s, it was kind of cute when Japan was selling us the kind of trinkets you win at a carnival game. It was less cute when they starting shipping transistor radios and cheap cameras. It was not at all amusing when they took a major bite out of our automobile market. And it is positively scary when they are selling us missile parts that are vital to our national defense.

That last fact came to light in 2003 when the dock workers on the West Coast were locked out of their jobs -- they were not on strike as the media often reported. The Bush Administration claimed that the dockworkers union was hurting national security by keeping parts that we need for our national defense out on the ships. No one questioned why those parts -- so badly needed for our national defense -- should even be on those ships -- coming from other countries -- in the first place.

And beyond that,-- trade now has been subverted to mean changing the entire structure of a corporate operation. Were not talking about trade when a company shifts its entire manufacturing process to Mexico or China and brings the finished product back in to sell on the domestic market. Thats not trade. Thats taking advantage of the ridiculously low wages paid to exploited workers and then continuing to charge top dollar on the domestic market. That is gaming the system to maximize profits and please shareholders. And any worries about the impact on a local tax base, the effect on workers and communities, and the sustaining of a market to buy the products are shunted aside. Good corporate citizenship has come to mean nothing. The effect on schools, on health care, on small businesses and on the fabric of life in cities and towns doesnt even register.

Who is looking out for the rest of us in all this? Government seems to be asleep at the switch when it is not actively encouraging the trend.

An example is an early April news story about Merck and Company, a pharmaceutical giant that shed over 3,000 U.S. jobs last year -- when profits were up over 5 percent -- and plans to abolish another 1,000 or more positions this year.

The Washington Post reported that Mercks picture abroad was quite different. They hired over 1300 new workers in 2003 on top of the 900 the year before -- OUTSIDE the United States. By the way -- company documents indicate that Merck had a cumulative $18 billion in foreign earnings untaxed by the end of last year, $3 billion more than in 2002. And as the Post further reported -- and I quote: "The company said it had no intention of EVER paying U.S. taxes on that escalating sum."

Now, lets get this straight. We are losing jobs in this country. We face a record federal budget deficit. Which would indicate that we are struggling with our economy. And yet -- through our tax policies we subsidize the creation of jobs in other nations and shrug while a corporation that is nominally American -- stiffs the taxpayer for taxes -- on $18 billion?

I fail to see how any logical person, or any patriotic man or woman cannot see that something is dramatically out of balance in the United States of America.

It is past time in this nation that we stopped shrugging our shoulders and saying that things are out of our control. Or that the global economy makes certain government actions or corporate behavior necessary. Issues such as bad economic policy and the victimization of entire communities are most definitely within our power to change. Thats where we need the wisdom to know the difference.

Its time for a new sense of community in America. Its time for a new commitment to taking control of our lives. Its time to temper the cutthroat competition that is the byproduct of todays economy. And its time for a new willingness to take responsibility for our future.

It will take people of all persuasions and all political parties to restore balance in America. We are more than just an economy; -- WE ARE A SOCIETY. The creation of wealth and the growth of our gross national product are worthy goals, but they cannot be our only goals. We are in danger in this country of destroying the American Dream whereby anyone can succeed through hard work. We need to redefine success so that a youngster today doesnt dream of growing up to send his communitys jobs to China while raking in a salary that is 180 times a much as his average employee.

If as a nation we support lofty ideals of freedom and democracy around the world, why -- cant we see that some of those same ideals are in danger right here at home?

We need to work together to find answers. It is time for the leaders of the business and professional communities to stop seeing labor relations as a zero sum game where one side can only win by destroying the other. It is time for corporate leaders to consider the ripple effects of their decisions to close plants and move jobs overseas -- and look beyond the next quarters balance sheet.

And it is TIME for government to stop being a passive spectator as our economic base erodes from within. The era of big government -- itself a pejorative term with political implications -- is indeed over. But as many of our finest mayors and state governors have shown, the era of balanced government is -- and must remain -- very much alive. Government should be the arbiter of society, curbing excesses wherever they may occur, not merely serving as the facilitators for special interests.

All of this may sound like hopeless idealism to some of you. Absolutely. And it will remain just that unless people take responsibility for their lives, their communities and their future.

I have been preaching this within the IBEW since I took office in 2001. We cannot whine about what "they" are doing to "us" when we can change things by standing together. We as union members have the responsibility to work with our management counterparts to promote the kind of first class training and education programs that will give workers the skills to thrive in the modern world. And we as workers have the responsibility for our own work ethic, professionalism and sense of duty to our customers. I am proud that our union has long understood the need to take responsibility for training future generations in our craft. We have long worked with our contractor partners and other employers -- business leaders in their communities -- to provide first-class training programs.

The IBEW and all other unions are working hard to increase our membership by encouraging more workers to join together to work for the common good under the union banner. Now, it may sound self-serving for me to say that having more workers join unions would make things better. But consider this the act of joining together in a union has been what gave working men and women -- white collar as well as blue collar -- the ability to exert control over their economic destiny. Unions are not organizations that exist for their own sake -- and if some have become that, then that is a tragedy. Unions are composed of members -- real live working people. And unions work best when their members are active in their affairs and committed to common goals for the betterment of society.

Unions cannot do it alone. The labor movement in recent years has conducted unprecedented outreach to religious, civic, fraternal, business and community organizations to find common ground and fight for the good of our communities. In some instances, these are major national campaigns, but more often than not such activities take place on the local level, where the bonds of neighborhood and community still mean something and can bridge the gaps.

It is when we -- labor, management, the business and professional communities -- stand together that we will get the kind of society we claim to want and the kind of government we deserve. Progress will not come automatically. It can only come about if we work for it with a renewed sense of the public interest and the common good. I firmly believe that this is the best path to a stronger America, a better America, and an America that has the integrity and fortitude to withstand the challenges of the modern world.

Everybody here is the descendant of immigrants. Even if you are a Native American, your distant ancestors walked across the land bridge from Asia in prehistoric times. From that day to this time, people come here for a reason -- the opportunity to be free, to reap the rewards of hard work, to raise a family in dignity and security.

Are we building a country where that is no longer true? Will we force our people to emigrate to follow the work? Will we see Americans, in all our beautiful diversity, going to China or India or Europe to find jobs?

I read recently that the authorities are going to reopen the Statue of Liberty for tours, which had been suspended since September 11, 2001. If present trends continue, they might as well keep it closed, because America will no longer deserve to be called the land of opportunity.

The thought I would leave with you today is: dont try to save the world all at once. Take care of Cleveland. Make your city a place where our best values shine through and prosperity is there for all who are willing to work, and compassion is present for those unable to fend for themselves. Start here -- on the shores of Lake Erie. And if others in large cities and small towns across this country do the same, the voice of the people will be heard once again. And they will have the opportunity to reap the rewards of hard work, -- to raise a family in dignity and security and only then will our nation again be in balance.

Thank you.