Clinton addresses the Building and Construction Trades Department

Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton spoke today at the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) 2008 Legislative Conference, where the BCTD celebrated a “century of leadership.” She told the participants to think of the election as a hiring decision, and the primary as a long job interview.

She said unions build the middle class, and that the American labor movement is under assault, which is shrinking the middle class. She said she co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to stand up for the right to organization. She also said she would stand up for the Davis-Bacon Act and fair wages, and that her plan is to raise minimum wage, and to tie minimum wage to congressional salaries. She said that when the economy is faltering, the country needs unions to “stand strong” for workers’ rights, wages, and a right to affordable health care.

Clinton said that if she becomes president, she will end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home, and when the veterans come home she will take care of them with programs such as Helmets to Hardhats to get them jobs. She said she also has ideas for a program called the Rebuild America Plan to create three million more jobs, and will appoint a Secretary of Labor that is pro-labor. She also said she plans to keep defense jobs in America, create a strategic energy fund, and work on trade that is good for families.

Clinton said she thinks this is the most anti-union and anti-labor administration this country has ever had. She also thinks Sen. John McCain is “dead wrong” on important issues facing America, and that he does not understand the economy. She said right now the U.S. has lost jobs, costs are up, and there is a home and credit crisis, and that what this country needs is a labor movement like it had in the 20th century.

Other speakers at the conference were Charlie Cook of the National Journal’s Cook Political Report, and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), and Joint Economic Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Cook said he expects the presidential election to be very close, like the last two elections in 2000 and 2004. Schumer said he also supports EFCA, and wants to “go back to the days” where laborers had bargaining power, and to “bring back the middle class.”