Las Vegas, NV
June 20, 2024
Hello, everyone! Buenos días.
Thank you, President Maldonado, for that introduction. And thank you for your leadership of this fantastic organization, which, like so many good things, was founded in my home state of California.
Let me also say a huge word of thanks to the legend, Arturo Vargas for his vision for NALEO and his leadership for the past three decades.
I'm so glad to be with you all.
As the folks in this room know, good jobs change lives. They bring dignity and respect. They sustain families. As President Biden often says, they're about being able to look your children in the eye and say, "Everything's going to be ok" and mean it.
That shouldn't be too much to ask for, but unfortunately, for too long, for far too many working people, it has been. For far too many Latino workers, it still is.
Earlier this week I was in Florida meeting with resilience workers—overwhelmingly Latino workers—who clean up and rebuild after disasters. While the rest of us run from those disasters, these Latino workers run toward them. And we are working to make sure that those jobs are jobs with decent pay, where workers don't lose their limbs, their lungs or even their lives to do them.
No worker should work full-time, year-round and still live in poverty.
No one should have to work two or three jobs just to piece together a life.
Today, President Biden's Investing in America agenda is about making sure people don't have to.
That's why I've launched a Good Jobs Summer Tour, where from Phoenix to Fort Lauderdale to Birmingham, I'm meeting with workers and employers to make the promise of a good job for all a reality.
Good jobs are not just transformational for those who do them. They also uplift entire communities. They instill hope.
In President Biden's America, we are investing in working people and in good jobs in those communities that need them the most.
To understand where we're going, we first have to remember where we were.
In 2020 and early 2021, just before President Biden came into office, COVID was raging. There was no national strategy to get it under control. Unemployment was high. And when people went to the store, they didn't know if they'd be able to find toilet paper. Worry about our "supply chain" was a topic of conversation because decades of underinvestment in America meant we were over-reliant on other countries for everything from surgical masks to semiconductor chips.
Compare that with where we are today.
Since President Biden came into office, our economy has added 15.6 million jobs. In fact, more jobs have been created since President Biden came into office than under any other president in the same period of time in this country's history. The unemployment rate in this country has been at record lows for the longest period of time since the 1960s.
And the gap in unemployment between white workers and Latino workers, and between white workers and Black workers, is the lowest it's ever been. We have more work to do. But it shows that when we are intentional about doing right by workers and about racial equity, we can change things.
And real wages are up—exceeding the rate of inflation—which means more breathing room for working families.
President Biden is also fighting to lower costs for every community like prescription drug prices, like capping the cost of insulin so you don't pay more than $35 a month. Like fighting company consolidation and calling on corporations to stop price gouging. And companies like Walmart and Target have recently announced they're lowering their prices.
None of that happens by accident. Leadership matters.
Remember something else from the past: the promise of an infrastructure week that never materialized.
We've also turned that around. Instead of an infrastructure week, we're now building an infrastructure decade. And many members of Congress who are here helped to make these investments possible.
I'm talking historic investments to repair roads and bridges, modernize airports, build electric vehicle charging stations, make sure that every family who turns on the faucet gets clean drinking water, and every community has access to high-speed reliable affordable internet.
This is not only an opportunity to deliver roads and bridges, but to create good jobs for people and communities that have been shut out of those opportunities in the past.
Now how we make sure those opportunities are available to all is critical. We have to think about that as infrastructure too. It's the roads and bridges that connect people to the good jobs they want and need and employers to the people they want and need.
But just like our physical infrastructure, our workforce system has some cracks. It's got some potholes. It does not connect to every community the way that it should.
Not this time.
In President Biden's America we are building a workforce infrastructure that's as strong as our physical roads and bridges, and worthy of all of America's communities.
I call this our nation's "opportunity infrastructure" and we are working with employers, unions, workforce boards in your districts and regions, community colleges and K-12 systems, and community-based organizations that serve those who've been shut out—civil rights organizations, women's organizations, immigrants' rights organizations, those that advocate for single moms, justice-impacted individuals, and more—that connects all of America's workers with good jobs.
We are working with all of them to build the high road to the middle class. Help us build this opportunity infrastructure, help us spread Good Jobs Principles and join our Good Jobs Alliance.
Now, we can't build the high road if we don't also combat the low road. If we don't end the use of illegal child labor—children as young as 13 working with dangerous chemicals and machinery. If we don't combat wage theft. Many employers have decided that it's cheaper to break the law, the chances of getting caught are slim, and the cost, even if they do get caught, is minimal.
Not on our watch.
Enforcing labor laws is one of the most important things the government does. It provides a floor beneath which no one should have to live and work.
Enforcing labor laws is also good for the employers that do right by their workers. It levels the playing field so they're not competing against bad actors that break the rules and exploit workers.
So we are putting wages back in workers' pockets, restoring the promise of a 40-hour workweek by expanding overtime pay to millions of working people, protecting people's hard-earned retirement savings. And we are working on the first nationwide heat standard to protect workers—so many of them Latino workers from fields to factories.
And we are protecting workers from their immigration status being weaponized against them through our deferred action program so workers can come forward and report violations without fear.
Let me be clear: immigrant workers who help keep our economy going and have helped with the historic economic recovery we've seen do not check their humanity at the border. And this week, President Biden announced a change to help keep families together. It will protect against deportation of an estimated 500,000 undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens.
We know we have more work to do to end the scourge of child labor, to ensure every worker gets a just day's pay for a hard day's work, to make sure every worker goes home healthy and safe at the end of the workday, and to make sure all of our communities can get a good job that changes their lives, brings home, and changes their community.
My promise to you is that we are all in. President Biden is all in.
Let's do this together.