See, Brothers and Sisters, last year may have been tough on our labor movement, but this year, this year is going to be even tougher.

See, the elections that we're facing in November are more important than at any time in our history, because our country is at a tipping point. Our country is not working the way that it should work. Our country is headed in the wrong direction. And we're at that point because the politicians who make the laws at every level of government are listening to big business and to the wealthy instead of to the voices of working families.

You see for the past 25 years, the far right and the near right and the new right and the not quite so right have been teaming up with their corporate conspirators to transform our country from one in which everybody gets a fair share of the wealth into a country where a fair share for most American means a crumb, a crumb of the wealth.

See, let's just look at what they've done. Twenty-five years ago, 40 percent of private sector jobs in our country offered pensions. Now, just 20 percent of them do. Twenty-five years ago, the average weekly earnings for an American worker was $281 per week. Today, adjusted for inflation, 25 years later, the average is $276 a week. Twenty-five years ago, the federal minimum wage was 30 percent higher than it is today when adjusted for inflation.

Twenty-five years ago, jobless workers could collect up to 15 months of unemployment compensation. Today they collect it for six months, and it's taxable.

Twenty-five years ago, the federal government spent $27.3 billion annually on its major job training program. Today it spends $4.4 billion.

Twenty-five years ago, our unions represented 37 percent of the American workforce and workers were largely free to join and to form unions. Today, we represent 12.5 percent of the workforce, and anyone who supports a union is intimidated, is discriminated against and fired. Up to 25,000 workers a year discriminated against, fired. Their crime? They wanted to join a union. They wanted to make a better life for them, and their families. They wanted to help their community by broadening out the wage and the tax base by being part of a union.

Well, today those attacks are escalating on the benefits that we've worked for, that we fought for, and too often, we bled for and we died for.

See, employers large and small are increasingly using our bankruptcy courts to void our contracts, to destroy retiree healthcare and pension benefits. Instead of using bankruptcy as a financial strategy of last resort, they're using it as a business strategy of first priority.

Twenty-five years ago, if you took your company into bankruptcy, you hung your head in shame when you went to the country club because you failed. Today, you take your company into bankruptcy, they give you a giant bonus and you're a hero when you go to the country club.