Remarks by President Barack Obama at Detroit Labor Day Event

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The White HouseOfﬁce of the Press Secretary, For Immediate Release, September 05, 2011

Remarks by President Barack Obama atDetroit Labor Day Event

GM Plant Parking Lot

Detroit, Michigan

Please see below for a correction (marked with an asterisk) to a typo in the transcript.1:30 P.M. EDTTHE PRESIDENT:

Thank you, Detroit!

(Applause.)

Thank you, Michigan!

(Applause.)

Oh,this is a --

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AUDIENCE:

Four more years!THE PRESIDENT:

Thank you.

(Applause.)

Thank you, everybody.

It is --AUDIENCE:

Four more years!

Four more years!

Four more years!THE PRESIDENT:

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.AUDIENCE:

Four more years!

Four more years!

Four more years!THE PRESIDENT:

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

I can tell Ghana got you ﬁred up.

(Applause.)

Thank you, Ghana, for that introduction.

Thank you all for having me.

It is good tobe back in Detroit.

(Applause.)

I'm glad I was able to bring a friend -- a proud daughter of theTeamsters, your Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, in the house.

(Applause.)We’re thrilled to be joined by so many other friends.

I want to acknowledge, ﬁrst of all, two of the ﬁnest senators in the country -- Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow are in the house.(Applause.)

Outstanding members of the congressional delegation -- John Dingell Bingham*,John Conyers, Sandy Levin, Gary Peters, and Hansen Clarke.

(Applause.)The president of the Metropolitan Detroit Central Labor Council, our host, Saundra Williams.

(Applause.)

AFL-CIO president, Rich Trumka.

(Applause.)

President of the Michigan AFL-CIO, Mark Gaffney.

(Applause.)

And some proud sons and daughters of Michigan representingworking people here and across the country -- SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, TeamstersPresident Jimmy Hoffa, UAW President Bob King, Utility Workers President Mike Langford.

(Applause.)

We are proud of them and we're proud of your congressional delegation who areworking every single day with your state and local elected ofﬁcials to create jobs and economicgrowth and prosperity here in Michigan and all across the country.I am honored, we are honored, to spend this day with you and your families -- the working menand women of America.

This day belongs to you.

You deserve a little R&R, a little barbecue --(laughter) -- little grilling -- because you’ve been working hard.

(Applause.)

You’ve beenworking hard to make ends meet.

You’ve been working hard to build a better life for your kids.

You’ve been working hard to build a better Detroit.

(Applause.) But that’s not all I’m going totalk to you about.I also want to talk about the work you’ve been doing for decades:

Work to make sure that folksget an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.

(Applause.)

Work to make sure that familiesget a fair shake.

The work you've done that helped build the greatest middle class the world hasever known.

(Applause.)

I’m talking about the work that got us a 40-hour workweek andweekends, and paid leave and pensions, and the minimum wage and health insurance, and Social

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Security and

Medicare -- (applause) -- the cornerstones of middle-class security.

That's becauseof your work.

(Applause.)If you want to know who helped lay these cornerstones of an American middle class you justhave to look for the union label. (Applause.)That’s the bedrock this country is built on.

Hard work.

Responsibility.

Sacriﬁce.

Looking outfor one another.

Giving everybody a shot, everybody a chance to share in America’s prosperity,from the factory ﬂoor to the boardroom.

That’s what unions are all about.

(Applause.)And that’s something that’s worth keeping in mind today.

We’ve come through a difﬁcult decadein which those values were all too often given short shrift.

We’ve gone through a decade wherewealth was valued over work, and greed was valued over responsibility.

And the decks were toooften stacked against ordinary folks in favor of the special interests.

And everywhere I wentwhile I was running for this office, I met folks who felt their economic security slipping away,men and women who were fighting harder and harder just to stay afloat.

And that was evenbefore the economic crisis hit, and that just made things even harder.So these are tough times for working Americans.

They’re even tougher for Americans who arelooking for work –- and a lot of them have been looking for work for a long time.

A lot of folkshave been looking for work for a long time here in Detroit, and all across Michigan, and allacross the Midwest, and all across the country.

So we’ve got a lot more work to do to recoverfully from this recession.But I’m not satisﬁed just to get back to where we were before the recession; we’ve got to fullyrestore the middle class in America.

(Applause.)

And America cannot have a strong, growingeconomy without a strong, growing middle class and without a strong labor movement.

(Applause.)That’s the central challenge that we face in our country today.

That’s at the core of why I ran forPresident.

That’s what I’ve been ﬁghting for since I’ve been President.

(Applause.)

Everythingwe’ve done, it’s been thinking about you. We said working folks deserved a break -- so withinone month of me taking ofﬁce, we signed into law the biggest middle-class tax cut in history,putting more money into your pockets.

(Applause.)We said working folks shouldn’t be taken advantage of -- so we passed tough ﬁnancial reformthat ended the days of taxpayer bailouts, and stopped credit card companies from gouging youwith hidden fees and unfair rate hikes, and set up a new consumer protection agency with oneresponsibility:

sticking up for you. (Applause.)

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