Press Conference

I have the honor to represent the bargaining unit field employees of the U.S. Department of Labor. This includes the field inspectors of both OSHA and MSHA. We have had a union contract with the Department of Labor since 1940 and not once has that union contract hampered the mission of the Department. This would include the mine rescue efforts of MSHA, which culminated with the rescue of the nine trapped miners that President Bush praised at a recent photo opportunity.

Federal mine inspectors, members of AFGE and state inspectors, members of ASCME, all members of the mine rescue teams were ready to go into the Quecreek mine and bring up any injured miners that day, or to recover the bodies at great risk to their own bodies. These unionized federal inspectors are ready at a moment's notice to go anywhere in the world to lend their expertise and bravery to any mine disaster, building collapse or earthquake, which they have accomplished many times.

Hundreds of AFGE OSHA inspectors and MSHA mine rescue members volunteered and worked at Ground Zero, starting within hours of the planes hitting the Towers. Assisting in making the workplace as safe as possible during those harrowing hours and days of the attempts to save the living and sadly to recover bodies of the victims.

At that site, even as Towers were burning and collapsing, hundreds of union firemen, police, EMTs and construction crews were attempting to save lives. Every emergency worker that died that day was a member of organized labor. With their union card in their back pocket and union contract in their breast pocket they ran up the steps of the Towers to save lives and lost their own. President Bush praised their sacrifice on the days and months following 9/11 but on the eve of the anniversary of that sacrifice, presidential union busting tarnishes their memory.

Who can forget the pictures of the Pentagon burning, the vivid picture of Congress running out of the Capitol to save the government, while at the Pentagon, brave military personnel and unionized government employees running to the building to save government workers.

Today, as we are here, the Vice President is in an undisclosed location. But we know where our union members are. They are at every government building, State County or federal. At every American monument, guarding our borders, our prisons, our national parks and our way of life. Do we care about national security? You bet we do, that’s what we do everyday.

Unionized federal employees - from border patrol agents and transit police to civilian workers in the Department of Defense - work hard every day to protect the freedoms Americans hold dear. All we ask is that we live in a country that protects our union rights as well.