Rep. George Miller: 'All of Us Together Will Win This Fight'

In a fiery speech Monday, U.S. Rep. George Miller condemned the "war on labor" that is hurting workers and the economy.

Firing up CWA convention delegates Monday, one of Capitol Hill's truest champions for workers and their rights condemned the anti-union corporate ideology that is gripping Washington and threatening to strangle America's middle class.

"There is a war on labor, and that's what you have to understand and what your neighbors have to understand, whether they're union members or not," U. S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said. The ideologues "know that unions are the rock of resistance, and that we can't have a strong middle class without unions. The employers know it and the Republicans know it."

The more they can weaken organizing and bargaining rights, the bigger their share of the pie, and the less power unions have to energize and mobilize millions of people to fight back, Miller said.

"I fundamentally believe that the future of our country rests on a strong middle class, and a strong middle class depends on strong unions," Miller said, describing some of the many ways that workers and the economic security of their families are at risk.

From attempts to destroy the National Labor Relations Board to support for unfair trade pacts that ship American jobs overseas, demands to reverse even minimal Wall Street reform and the new push to privatize Medicare and Social Security, Big Business and its Republican enablers in Congress will stop at nothing to undermine the middle class, Miller said.

Their Medicare scheme, for instance, would make it impossible for the vast majority of Americans to afford quality medical care in retirement. "For a 54-year-old, you'd better find another $182,000 to save over the next decade just to pay for their plan," Miller said. "If you're younger than 54, you'll have to save even more."

But Miller pledged to never give up and said he knows that CWA won't either. "I will work every day as hard as I can, I will fight every day as hard as I can, and all of us together will win this fight," he said.