Fighting for a Better Future: Labor and Education Policy

AFT President Randi Weingarten
David N. Dinkins Leadership and Public Policy Forum 
Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
Dec. 4, 2024

Thank you, Secretary Clinton, Dean Yarhi-Milo, professor Fuchs, Mayor Nutter, and all the assembled School of International and Public Affairs students.

I want to start by talking about two fellow New Yorkers. First, the man for whom this forum is named, Mayor David Dinkins.      

Mayor Dinkins was elected with a swell of hope amid a sea of fear. Dire challenges—the crack epidemic, homelessness, fractured city services—were all made worse by a deep fiscal crisis. Mayor Dinkins addressed them with humility and humanity. His policies centered on helping children, families and communities—from after-school programs to community policing.  

I was the counsel to the United Federation of Teachers at the time, and had started teaching in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in September 1991, just weeks after the incident that was the turning point in Dinkins’ mayoralty.

David Dinkins loved the city he called the “gorgeous mosaic.” He believed New York could prosper if we respected our diversity, if we found common ground and pursued mutual goals—each of us important and distinct pieces of the gorgeous mosaic.  

I am honored to deliver a lecture named for him. Etched in me from that turbulent time is an understanding that, in public policy and politics, we are always in a race between hope and fear, aspiration and anger.

We are in another turbulent time. My remarks today are an attempt to chart a path forward—a path that leans, as Mayor Dinkins did, on hope, not fear, recognizing full well that fear, anger and a sense of powerlessness in many ways fueled the results of this election.

Which brings me to another New Yorker who looms large today—actually, a former New Yorker—Donald Trump. It’s fair to say that his approach is quite different from Mayor Dinkins’, and that the United States is at a turning point with his re-election.

My primary purpose today is not to analyze the election—this esteemed university has plenty of intellectual firepower to do that. But I think incumbency, inflation, immigration and identity were at play. (Yes, I love alliteration.)  

When people feel powerless to improve their lives, they often vote to punish the incumbent. Indeed, incumbents are being voted out across the globe. 

Inflation. In our fractured society, Americans have at least one thing in common: The cost of housing, gas and eggs is too damn high.  

Then, as the Wizard says to Elphaba in Wicked, you must have a scapegoat to blame, which in this election became immigrants.

Finally, identity. Of course, race and gender played a role. But so did class, big-time, as evidenced by Trump’s gains among non-college-educated voters of all races.

With all these factors interacting in this election, how do we begin to understand what happened?  

I start with people’s economic well-being. We know that millions of Americans share deep fears and doubts about being able to support themselves, let alone support their families.  

Two charts speak volumes to me.  

One: the chart showing the trajectory of wages since 1979 for men with a high school degree. Those workers make 22 percent less than they did 45 years ago. This is downward mobility, and it has real economic consequences but also inflicts psychic wounds on a country that has long believed each generation would do better than the last.  

The second chart shows, for the first time, that Democrats won the richest third of Americans while losing low-income and middle-class Americans. The party of working people lost working people. These trends began after the 2008 financial crisis, when people perceived their government was doing more to bail out big banks than to help families recover. And while Democrats reversed those trends in 2018 and 2020, they swung back hard this year. Indeed, in the last nine of 10 federal elections, one party or the other has lost control of the House, Senate or White House.  

People suffering economically and feeling powerless to change their condition expressed their dissatisfaction through their vote. But other sources of agency and opportunity exist. Americans don’t need a strongman promising to “fix” their lives. Education, good jobs and the labor movement are ways people are able to empower themselves. My union works to strengthen these engines of opportunity. And in this election, voters overwhelmingly supported both public schools and workers’ rights when they were on the ballot, including where Trump won.

In one Nebraska county that Trump won by 95 percent, private school vouchers were defeated 60 percent to 40 percent. North Dakota voters rejected a bid to end property taxes that would have decimated public schools and services, even as they voted for Trump by more than 2 to 1 over Kamala Harris. These were not anomalies.  

So yes, I am worried about our democracy and whether we are headed toward autocracy and fascism. I am worried about our fundamental rights. But, as Cas Mudde, a political scientist who specializes in extremism and democracy, recently posted on Bluesky, “The fight against the far right is secondary to the fight to strengthen liberal democracy.”  

Public education and growing the labor movement are vehicles for creating agency among Americans. They are requisites for Americans to prosper and for democracy to be not just salvaged but strengthened. These pathways to opportunity require fair public policy.

And our test for policy is twofold: One, will it help make people’s lives better? And two, does it respect people’s humanity?

That’s why, for example, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pramila Jayapal have all said that if the president-elect means what he says about enforcing antitrust laws, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and capping consumer credit rates, they will support it.  

But if Trump does the bidding of Big Tech, Big Oil and the billionaires who bankrolled his campaign, as early signs suggest, we must expose this monumental betrayal of the working people who voted for him seeking lower costs and a better living standard. And we can reconnect with these voters by fighting for policies that help working- and middle-class Americans have a better life.

Whatever Trump does as president, Americans who care about our democracy have to recognize the needs of, and respect the agency of, low-income and middle-class Americans. This means breaking with decades of neoliberal, trickle-down economic policies. Policies that have disempowered and disconnected us from each other and hollowed out communities and the American dream while consolidating power for billionaires.  

It means learning from another New Yorker, Franklin Roosevelt, who enacted policies that gave all Americans a fighting chance to succeed.  

And it means strengthening the two best pathways to opportunity—public schools and unions, through which all Americans can attain a better life, and where we fight for dignity and respect for all.  

In a world of great distrust, of great unease, AFT members—who work in preK-12 education, higher education, healthcare and public services—are trusted. We are trusted because we make a difference every day in the lives of others.  

While we may punch above our weight, the AFT’s 1.8 million members make up just 0.5 percent of the country’s population.  

None of us can do everything, but each of us can do something to reclaim the promise of America.

Here are three education strategies that can enable agency, opportunity and trust—and can be done from the ground up, neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community. Because that’s where it works best.  

First, literacy. Reading should be a national priority—for students and the 20 percent of adults who have difficulty reading.  

That is what the AFT is doing through our Reading Opens the World campaign. We’ve given away 10 million brand-new books to children, families and community partners over the last decade—books with engaging topics and characters who kids exclaim “look like me.”

In response to the educational losses from the pandemic, the AFT has used Reading Opens the World to disrupt learning loss, connect with families and build relationships. As others have banned books and tried to erase history, we have given out books (including acclaimed banned books) at more than 400 community events across the country, breaking down barriers and spreading joy.  

We have given books to social workers to bring on home visits to help them connect with children, and to school bus drivers so students can read on long bus rides.  

Last December, AFT members in Cleveland gave out thousands of books during the Christmas holiday reading parade. This December, we’ll be at community events in Texas and Florida. And we plan to give away 1 million more books in 2025. We will work with any philanthropy, any city, any library, any union and any school board to do so.  

Second, student, family and educator well-being must be a focus. The AFT is working across the country to open more community schools—public schools that are both a place and a partnership between educators, students, families, community members and service providers. From services for immigrant families to adult education, from community food banks and clothes closets to longer school days like Mayor Dinkins’ Beacon program provided, community schools are one of the most effective strategies we have to help students and their families thrive.  

The AFT is working with parents to minimize the harms of social media for our young people, taking on tech companies that put profits ahead of children’s well-being.  

If you know a teacher, you know that they are stressed out, burned out, overworked and underpaid. They are depleted by the difficulties of the pandemic and demoralized by the creep of culture wars into education. All of this has created alarming teacher shortages. The AFT is working on several fronts to reduce stress, improve well-being and support teachers and school staff so they don’t feel the need to leave the profession and the students they love.

Third, school should be relevant and exciting, so kids want to be there. They need engaging, experiential, hands-on learning. A recent xQ survey found that engagement is parents’ top priority for their child’s education experience. High school must be more than college prep. Every student deserves opportunity, whether they are immediately college-bound, eventually college-bound, or among the more than 60 percent of high school graduates who don’t go to college. Whether the next stop is a university, a microchip fabrication plant or a small business, young people need to be adept in four skill sets: critical thinking, problem-solving, resilience and relationships.  

These are the new basics.  

That is why the high school experience must be transformed.  

Career and technical education is a great example of this engagement. CTE students gain knowledge and real-life skills and experiences in everything from healthcare to advanced manufacturing to automotive repair. CTE programs partner with industry to offer students internships, apprenticeships and stackable credentials in good, in-demand jobs. Here in New York, we’re working with Micron Technology, a leader in semiconductor manufacturing, to train middle school and high school students for high-tech careers. And with Microsoft, we are helping educators from communities as varied as New York City; Wichita, Kan.; and San Antonio, building students’ artificial intelligence literacy so they can thrive in a rapidly changing work landscape.  

Ninety-three percent of students who take at least two classes in high-quality CTE programs graduate from high school, and they often graduate with industry-recognized credentials in their field. These experiences should be the norm.

All of this takes resources, which is why Trump doubling down on his pledge to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and expand school vouchers is dead wrong. Let’s be clear—the teachers I represent don’t care about protecting a bureaucracy in Washington. But you bet we care about protecting the vital federal funds that go directly to helping kids from poor and working-class families—funding that disproportionately goes to red states, by the way. You bet we care about protecting students with disabilities and ensuring the civil rights of all students. These essential Department of Education functions, if eliminated, will have a disastrous impact on children and families.  

Public schools ignite opportunity for students. A union card sustains that opportunity throughout their careers and into their retirement.

I am going to throw down a gauntlet. If the president-elect wants to make good on his populist promises to working-class voters, he will support all workers’ right to organize and join unions. Which, by the way, his designee to lead the Department of Labor has supported.  

The economic advantages of union membership are clear. Union members enjoy higher wages and better benefits. Union households have nearly four times the wealth of nonunion households, and they are more likely to own a home and have a retirement plan.

Support for unions is at the highest level since 1965. Nearly 90 percent of Americans under age 30 support unions—a group that swung toward Trump in this year’s election. Nearly half of nonunion workers say they would vote to join a union if they could. Yet only 1 in 10 workers in America is in a union. In fact, Americans are 13 times more likely to have an Amazon Prime membership than to have a union card.

One cause is five decades of efforts by billionaires and big businesses to decimate unions, speaking of Amazon. De-unionization is a significant factor in the surge in inequality and the decline of the middle class over the last 40 years.  

No wonder so many working people feel hopeless. Feelings of loneliness, hopelessness and lack of agency are especially acute for young men. Just take a listen to the manosphere podcasts.

Unions, as well as the education strategies I’ve outlined, are antidotes to the anxiety and isolation that so many feel. People form and join unions to have agency—to control their own destiny. And unions, like public schools, allow people across races, backgrounds and political beliefs to connect, to see they have common interests and values, and to build solidarity.  

Conversely, the downward mobility and anxiety facing working people today are the result of a trickle-down economy enabled by our political leaders. Over the last 40 years, a new set of economic rules have prioritized wealth over work, corporate profits over worker pay, shareholder returns over societal value, and the bogus claim that, in a plutocracy, economic benefits somehow will trickle down to the rest of us. This system concentrated power in the hands of billionaires and big corporations, giving them wealth and influence at levels exceeding even the 19th century’s Gilded Age. It’s no coincidence that as worker power has diminished, wealth has been consolidated at the top, inequality has grown and public confidence in democracy has weakened.  

Yes, of course, we need to grow the economy, which is always the pretext for neoliberalism. The myth goes like this: Unregulated and unbridled markets, with no guardrails, will solve everything. This neoliberal trickle-down philosophy doesn’t work, hasn’t worked, and will never work for anyone but the rich. Yet it keeps getting repackaged and resold to the American people with promises that this time it will be different. It’s like an ex claiming that this time they’ve really changed. It’s time to break up with trickle-down neoliberalism once and for all.  

As a teacher of history, I have looked back to an earlier time of economic crisis and turmoil—the Great Depression—for inspiration on a path forward.  

Think about 100 years ago—the 1920s. It was not just about flappers, speakeasies and the Great Gatsby. It was a time of immense economic inequality and unprecedented wealth at the top, racism and lynchings, immigration crackdowns, tariffs and trade wars, isolationism, a president who first coined the America First movement, and policies that led to the Great Depression.  

It was also the time of the original progressive movement, which advocated for social and political reforms to help the working class, fight against political corruption, and reduce the political and economic influence of the ultra-wealthy and big corporations. Progressives and politicians like New York Govs. Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt were focused on tangible solutions that made life better for people, ideas and policies that later became the New Deal.  

Once FDR was elected president in 1932, these progressive policies led the country out of the depths of the crisis, especially for the least advantaged Americans. One of my sheroes and a Progressive Era reformer herself, Frances Perkins, served as FDR’s secretary of labor. Perkins pressed for the landmark Wagner Act giving workers the right to organize unions and bargain collectively. She fought for the first federal minimum wage and maximum workweek, and chaired the commission that developed legislation that became the Social Security Act. Roosevelt and Perkins believed in reforms that would propel opportunity for generations and fundamentally restructure America’s economy to benefit working people.  

The decades that followed saw union membership in America surge, and with it the creation of the greatest middle class in the history of the world.  

But starting in the 1970s, neoliberals and corporate interests coordinated to weaken or dismantle these policies, which has led to our current inequality, economic insecurity and crisis of democracy.

So, SIPA students, let’s gather inspiration from those progressive reformers who showed us that we must match times of great anxiety and hopelessness with great ambition. Laws and policies and institutions must meet the moment. Congress must pass the PRO Act, increase the minimum wage, and rewrite economic rules to stop big corporations and billionaires from rigging capitalism further in their favor. Let’s keep building upon the Affordable Care Act and guarantee Social Security for generations to come. And let’s finally invest adequately in public education.  

Let’s provide educators and students with the support and resources they need for meaningful pathways that engage students and equip them to graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge needed to secure a good union job or go to college if that is their path, to have the agency and opportunity to find their American dream.  

And if the powers that be in this country fight against this agenda, we fight back.

We must create an economic movement for all families to be better off, and that takes organizing in our communities and the halls of power—whether it’s transforming a high school, organizing a community literacy event, participating in a local election, supporting a local union, cleaning up a park, or any civic participation that builds agency, trust and community.  

My union will do our part—AFT members making a difference in the lives of others every day, paving pathways to opportunity, and fighting for respect and dignity for all Americans.  

We are in a race between hope and fear. For hope to win, it requires all of us. The simple truth is that we all do better when we all do better. We must fight for the promise of America for all of us—for our freedoms, for our democracy, and for working folks and kids to have real agency and opportunity.  

Thank you.