You cannot support a family on the minimum wage. You can't even support one person on the minimum wage, but yet this Congress and this administration refuses even in the face of giving more and more tax cuts to the wealthy, even in the face of bonuses and stock options to the CEOs of the country. Even in the face of everything going to the people at the top, even in the face of the greatest separation between the rich and everybody else in this country, even in the face of giving Congress people a raise every year in their own pay, they're unwilling to give the lowest paid workers in the country an increase in the minimum wage. It's immoral as the General just said, and it needs to be changed.

While I'm on this subject, I think we're approaching the time when America is going to be open to the idea for the first time in a long time of helping labor unions to be able to organize workers.

For the last 30 years there's been no break through in the law or the regulations to make it a level playing field so that union leaders like all of you have a fair shot at educating unorganized workers and getting them to decide to be in a union.

None of us wants an unlevel playing field. No one is saying that unions should automatically represent workers. It always must be a Democratic election where people make this decision on their own. But you're not on a level playing field today.

The employer has all of the assets at their beck and call to intimidate, to educate, to inform people of why they shouldn't be in a union, but you aren't given a fair chance to educate and inform on why a union. And then even if you win an election, the lawyers can stretch it out for years, frustrating your ability to get a contract.

Now to do this, to make these changes, to get card check neutrality to get neutral atmosphere, we have got to, I think, change the Congress. We have got to get Democrats back in control. We need a Democratic president in 2008, and we need to change the labor laws to make it possible to organize workers.

I'm not supposed to be partisan here, and I'm not a partisan person, but to me what's right is right, and in the end this is a fight over power. Politics is a substitute for violence. Don't ever mistake it for anything other than that. So it's a fight for power.

The employers, not all of them thankfully, but many of them don't want unions to have power. And so they back candidates that will keep that unlevel playing field, so you can't organize unorganized workers.

So the way you take power in a democracy where we substitute balance for bullets is to get involved in the election and elect people that will create that level playing field. There is another big issue that people in labor should look at as you make your electoral decisions and that issue is trade. It's part and parcel of what's happening to our standard of living.

Why is it happening? It's a simple reason. We are in a global economy. We all know that. We are now in competition, not just with people in the state next to us or the state on the West Coast or the East Coast. We are in competition with people in Mexico and Brazil and India and China and Bangladesh.

There is 6 billion people in the world today. 4 billion of them live on less than $1 a day. Most of those people live in China and India and Brazil and Bangladesh, the countries I mentioned.

We are now in direct competition with them. You can produce a car made in China a heck of lot cheaper than you can produce a car made in the United States because the wages are a 10th or a 20th of what needs to be paid in the United States.

A UAW worker in Michigan or Missouri, where I'm from, makes with all the benefits loaded in $60 an hour. A worker in Mexico in a Ford plant or GM plant may make $1 an hour or a $1.50 an hour. In China it would be 50 cents an hour.

Now I'm not dumb and neither are you. You know we live in this little bitty globe today. Even if you and I wanted to keep that trade out, we couldn't. With today's transportation and communications, you're going to have to deal with it. But at the end of the day, if we don't figure this problem out, we're going to lose the standard of living, and we're going to lose the middle class in this country.

Look as what's happening in automobiles today. Just to take that one area. Yeah, we've lost shoes, we've lost clothes, we've lost lots of things, but now we're about to lose automobiles.

General Motors bought out 30,000 workers because they don't need them anymore because they're losing market share. Ford is in trouble today. They're buying out workers. They're closing plants. They're closing a plant in St. Louis that has been there my entire lifetime. It's being closed. They're closing plants all over the United States. If things don't change, in my humble opinion, Ladies and Gentlemen, you won't make an automobile in the United States.