A Message from AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler

Two reports came out this week that I wanted to highlight because they tell a seriously troubling story about the state of our economy. One found that corporations used the market chaos of the pandemic as an excuse to price-gouge working families to pad their profits. Even as supply chains returned to normal, corporate greed drove 53% of inflation for the second half of last year. While working people struggled to put food on the table, fuel in our cars and clothes on our kids’ backs, greedy CEOs upped their prices to increase their bottom line. Why? Simply because they could. The second report said the fortunes of the five richest men have shot up by 114% since 2020 and that we’re well on our way to having the world’s first trillionaire within the next decade.

These statistics are maddening. Especially when you consider that 63% of workers in this country don’t even have a rainy-day fund big enough to cover the average cost of an ambulance ride. Or that the federal minimum wage in this country hasn’t budged since 2009. Or that 50% of workers do not earn enough during a 40-hour workweek to afford a modest one-bedroom. I could go on and on.

Elon Musk was recently quoted as saying that he didn’t like unions because they create a “lords and peasants” relationship between bosses and workers. Well I have news for him and the rest of the 1%: Unions didn’t create that dynamic—we’ve already been living in it.

An unbelievably small number of people in this country control so much of the wealth while a majority of us are forced to tighten our belts every year, beg for scraps and live paycheck to paycheck. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that the surest weapon against unchecked corporate greed is a union card, a well-negotiated contract and a healthy labor movement. So, while I know these reports can be scary and make us feel like we’re fighting an uphill battle, we have to remember that we know how to rebalance the scales so the people who make this extreme wealth possible get our fair share of the pie. The answer is we just have to be brave enough and organized enough to take a bigger piece ourselves.

Liz