Transcript: Mario Cuomo Campaign for Economic Justice, Labor Leaders, State and Local Elected Officials Rally in Kingston to Fight for $15 Statewide Minimum Wage

Earlier today, the Mario Cuomo Campaign for Economic Justice rallied with labor leaders and state and local elected officials in support of raising the minimum wage to $15 for all workers. The groups rallied in Kingston, the fourth stop along the "Drive for $15" bus tour, which kicked off yesterday, making stops in Manhattan, the Bronx and Long Island.

The renewed push comes on the heels of the Governor's recently released minimum wage report which found that raising the minimum wage to $15 would benefit more than 2.3 million workers and boost direct spending power by more than $15.7 billion in New York State. The Governor is urging the State Legislature to pass his phased-in minimum wage proposal this session.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is below:

Thank you, good morning Kingston. First to Tamara, isn't she great? Let's give her a big around of applause and thank her for being here and showing her support. To Mayor Steve Nobel -- thank you very much for today and helping organize. Congratulations on your election. County Executive Mike Hein, I am a big fan of Mike Hein. He has a progressive vision and he makes it a reality by making government work, Mike Hein. To George Gresham and 1199. 1199 has always been a great force for social justice in New York and it is a pleasure to be with them and I thank him personally for accepting the role of the Chairman of the Mario Cuomo Campaign. It means everything to me, George Gresham.

It is a pleasure to be back in Kingston. This is such a beautiful part of the state. I have a long relationship from when I was HUD Secretary. We did a lot of work together --Mayor T.R. Gallo at that time, God rest his soul. I spent a lot of fun days at Roundout Creek at the time, and let me just leave it like that -- fun days at Roundout Creek and Esopus Creek. It really is just a magnificent part of the state. We have done a lot of good work and we are going to be doing a lot more. We have something coming up called the Catskill Challenge this summer, I don't know if you've heard of it yet. It is an opportunity to highlight the region. Too many people in downstate New York don't really know how beautiful the Mid-Hudson is and the attributes that we have here, so we are going to have the Catskill Challenge and we are going to have some fun and come up with some competitions and make some wagers. The Mayor was talking a little smack in the RV about how he thinks he is going to win all sorts of money at the Catskill Challenge so we will see, but you know let the young mayors talk. Let them talk. The County Executive was just listening. George is going to come up so it will be a lot of fun.

And this trip is a lot of fun. We have this great RV for this great cross-state tour, you will see it outside. You can't miss it actually, it has all this writing all over it. They told me it would be blue and red. It is really blue and pink, which is nice, but it is different. It is a little loud for my style. But we aren't doing a lot of recreation in the recreational vehicle. We are doing some re-creation, you could say. It is a re-creation, we want to recreate the American dream. We want to recreate the New York dream. We want to get back to the values which made New York State and this nation what they are today. We want to get back to the values that made us the success that we are today, because we have lost our way. We really have.

This economy, the new economy is a much more different economy and a much more different relationship than we ever had before. The premise in this country and the premise in this state was that hard work pays and we respect one another and there is a relationship imbalance and of decency among us. This new economy is creating all sorts of wealth for a very small number of people and is disrespecting a large number of people and taking opportunity and mobility away from a large number of people. We are creating jobs in this state, 7.8 million jobs in the state of New York. We have more jobs in the state of New York today than have ever existed before in the state. So the economic machine is working but at that same time you have that joke: "I know about the new economy and 7.9 million jobs, I have three of them." You have jobs at the top end for a select niche of skills and talents which make a lot of money, and then a devaluation of the majority of the jobs. The American worker is being left behind by the economy. That is not rhetoric. That is a fact. That is a true fact.

We have the highest income inequality in history, we have the greatest polarization of wealth in history, we have the largest disconnect between the workers' pay and the productivity of the worker in history. Up until about the 1970's productivity would increase and as productivity would increase wages would increase with productivity, 1950's to the 1970's, productivity went up 90 percent, pay for workers went up 90 percent. From the 70's until today productivity went up 75 percent, pay went up 9 percent. 50 years ago a CEO made about twenty times what a worker makes. Today they make three hundred times what the worker makes. That polarity, that disconnect is what you feel out there.

And we had more of a compact as a people where we said, we would work together and we will support one another, and we understand that the greatest success is shared success -- that was the motto of the country. That was the operating paradigm. It's not the first time this economy has shifted. We've gone through worse economic shifts. The Great Depression, FDR showed us the way forward. And what was the way forward? In one word it was together. Social security. We are a society, we want to provide security for all of us -- social security. We're now at a place where we have special insecurity -- a sense that you are on your own, and if you get into trouble you are on your own, and don't look to your left and don't look to your right because it's all about you and you get what you can get for you, and you're an individualist.

FDR set the minimum wage. Respecting the decency of labor for everyone -- just the honor of work, the dignity of work. The minimum wage was not a wage that said, "This is an amount that you could scrape by." Minimum wage, FDR said, was the wage necessary to provide a decent living. A decent living. And the fuel that made this country this country and this state this state, was the aspirations that George was talking about. It was more the idea. It was more the dream. You could come to this country from anywhere on the globe and you could be anything you wanted to be. You came to New York because you had big dreams and you knew that in New York, those dreams could become a reality. George's parents came up from the south. We need opportunity. What do you need for opportunity? What was the state of opportunity? We're going to New York, boy. That's where this can happen.

My people, my grandparents came from Italy. They had no opportunity there. Where were they going? They were going to America. My grandfather, God rest his soul, used to say, "God bless America." You could go to America and be everything you wanted to be. And who came? Not the rich people. The rich people stayed where they were because they were rich people. The only people who got in little boats and didn't speak the language and didn't know where they were going and had to sleep in a cot -- those were poor people. And we said," That's fine."

The Statue of Liberty, Emma Lazarus, said, "Give me your tired, your poor." She didn't say, "Give me your rich." She said, "Give me your poor." And we said, "You come here and we will work with you together, forge one community, one family, and you could make it. We'll treat you with respect and decency and you do what you can but we're going to reward your work." That's what we have to get back to because that's what we've lost and that's why you feel the difference in the chemistry. In the air you feel a difference in the energy. You can see it on people's faces. They don't believe that the future is necessarily going to be better for them. They don't believe it's going to be better for their children. It was supposed to be that every generation does better. Your children get a little more education, they get a better job that make more pay. They're not sure of that.

So what do we do? We act, first of all. We analyze, we talk, we commiserate, we plan, but then we act. Two specific actions: Number one, raise the minimum wage to $15. Do it today. Now, why $15? Because the minimum wage which we raised in the state of New York to $9-- federally, it's $7 -- but $9, $18,000 a year -- you can't live on $18,000 a year. You do the math, it does not work. You can't pay rent, clothing, food, expenses for $18,000 a year. Well where did you get $15? And you hear the opponents say, "Oh that's too high, $15." Do you know where we got $15? If you go to the seventies, which is really where this quote, unquote new economy started to break and started to materialize, you go back to the seventies, you take the minimum wage in the seventies and just index it to inflation, and you wind up with our $15.00 proposal. And that is fair. Take the minimum wage from the seventies and index it to inflation. And then, because this is going to be a fight--George is exactly right -- you're going to hear the opponents spout that great conservative doctrine that the government shouldn't interfere with the workplace and government shouldn't interfere in the marketplace and setting the minimum wage is interference. Really? Well here's the truth -- minimum wage has been set in law for decades and decades on both the federal and the state level.

Number two, you want to talk about interference in the marketplace -- what is now happening is a fraud and a scam on the taxpayers of this state. Companies pay a minimum wage. We just went through this with the fast food industry with McDonald's and Burger King. McDonald's pays a worker the minimum wage -- that's $18,000 a year. At $18,000 a year, you are still below the poverty level in the state of New York, which means you qualify for government benefits. So that worker comes to the state of New York and we give them benefits of about $7,000. So McDonalds pays $18,000, you New York State taxpayers, pay an additional $7,000 for a total of $25,000. Interference in the marketplace? This has us subsidizing minimum wage workers staff people from McDonalds. Why are you asking taxpayers to subsidize McDonald's workers, and Burger King workers and fast food workers?

This, like so many of those conservative doctrines, is the greatest form of hypocrisy. When we are subsidizing the corporations that is fine, that is fine -- subsidize McDonalds, subsidize Burger King -- which by the way make billions of dollars -- and they never said a word. Have you ever heard a conservative stand up and say, "Well hold on a second. I want to stop these subsidies to these big corporations." By the way, do you know how much our subsidies are just to McDonalds and Burger King in this state? $700 million per year. Have you ever heard anyone stand up and say, "I want to stop that giveaway to those big corporations?" Not a word. But now we say we want to raise the minimum wage for the worker who can't get by and now we are interfering with the marketplace, but not when it was a corporate subsidy. That is the hypocrisy that is all through this conservative movement.

Second thing we can do, because it is not just about the money. It's about the respect, and it's about the power relationship between the employer and the employee. Because the employee in this economy, in a low wage job, is often treated like a commodity and you don't often have that same relationship with the employer and that same respect with the employer. So if something happens in your life, something happens in your home and you go to your employer and you say, "You know what, I have a problem at home and I need a few weeks off to take care of something." The employers will say, "You need a few weeks off, take a few weeks off, by the way take another few weeks off and don't bother coming back because I am just going to get another employee because there is a long line of people who will work for these jobs." That respect, that ability to work but to also live your life is important and that is why the second piece of this is paid family leave in the state of New York.

This my friends, because this is about quality of life, it's about who we are, it's about leading a life that you are proud of and celebrating life on both the positive and the negative. I just went through a situation last year where we were losing my father and we knew we were losing him and we knew there was limited time left and that is the time in life when you should be there. It's just the right thing -- there is still a right thing in life -- and you feel it in your heart, you feel it in your chest, the right thing is to be there. For what purpose? No purpose. The purpose is just to be there. To hold a hand, to smile, to say "I love you.' That is the purpose and in some ways it doesn't even matter, all the years before those three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, that is everything. I kick myself, frankly for not being there more, for not spending time, for not prioritizing. Everything was more important than this crisis. It's all baloney. That was what was important. Every worker has the right to be there at those times and you shouldn't have to choose between being broke and quitting your job and doing the right thing by your family members.

This is not going to be easy. $15, our proposal, is the most aggressive proposal in the United States of America and I am proud of it. Our proposal for paid family leave is the most aggressive proposal in the United States and I am proud of it. Why the Mario Cuomo Campaign? Because my father was a very simple fellow at the end of the day. He was all about principle and all about fighting the good fight for principle. This is about principle. This is about who we are, what we believe, what we want to be as a society, what we want to be as a state. This is about morality, and humanity, and decency, and us saying "we are one" at the end of the day. We are not going to be polarized, we are not going to be separated, we are going to be unified -- that is what we are about in New York. We are going to come together because when we come together you can't beat us. We know there is opposition but we are going to fight the good fight and we are going to win the good fight because we are going to go all across this state and we are going to unify people and New Yorkers unified cannot be defeated and we are going to do it the old fashioned way. Thank you and God bless you.

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