New York, New York Remarks at the International Ladies Garment Workers Union 37th Tri-Annual Convention.

President Chick Chaikin, Governor Carey, Lieutenant Governor Cuomo, Congresswoman and next United States Senator Liz Holtzman:

Sometimes I have a hard time deciding which I like best, "Hail to the Chief" or "Look for the Union Label." [Laughter] But with your endorsement, I'd like to make a prediction right now that when November the 4th comes we're going to be singing both of them as a duet, and they're going to go very well together.

To President Chaikin and Secretary-Treasurer Shelley Appleton, your secret weapon in Washington, Evie Dubrow, ILG' ers, friends:

Chick, I want to thank you for that wonderful introduction and the words you said before I came in here. I was listening very carefully. That may have been one of the two best speeches I've heard you make all year. [Laughter] The other one, of course, was when you nominated me at the Democratic National Convention. Chick has the makings of a great orator, if he just wasn't so timid and would go ahead and speak up and say what he has to say. [Laughter] All of you need to help me help Chick overcome his bashfulness. [Laughter]

Before I came here to speak to you, he asked me a very serious question, one that I've been asked about many times. And I would like to respond here in this public place and in a very sober way. It's a matter of great concern to us, and that is Israel and its relationship with the United Nations General Assembly.

The United States has opposed and we will continue firmly to oppose any attempt to deprive the State of Israel of its legitimate rights as a respected member of the international community.

I noted with great pleasure the UNESCO Conference which met in Belgrade last week and which rejected an effort to question Israel's credentials. We will strongly oppose any effort to exclude Israel from the United Nations General Assembly.

There is absolutely no doubt that Israel is a bona fide member of the United Nations, and Israel has the right to participate fully in that organization and all of its specialized agencies. The illegal expulsion of a member of the family of nations from the General Assembly would be a challenge to the basic principles of the United Nations. It would raise the gravest questions about the future of the General Assembly and further participation of the United States and other nations in the deliberations of that body. We will not permit it.

I am proud to be President of a great nation that stands up for human rights, not only in our own country but around the world, just as this union was standing up for human rights long before most of us were born.

I'm proud to have Chick Chaikin as my friend and ally in that struggle because he is one of the most forceful spokesmen for the rights of free trade unions in the entire world, and your support makes it possible for him to be that valuable spokesman everywhere.

And I'm also proud to stand before you as the standard-bearer of the one political party that represents the historic concerns of America's working people, and that is your and my Democratic Party of the United States.

I lead this party as its nominee in the crucial election of 1980 because of your help. And I am proud to share that leadership with a great friend of labor and the best Vice President that any President ever had, Fritz Mondale.

There are a lot of things that bind us closely together. I'm very proud to run with the support of a union that believes that our society has a moral obligation to do the most for those who have the least. That's what compassionate, democratic government is all about. That is what this campaign is all about. That is why you and I are fighting side by side, and that is why you and I are going to win November the 4th.

I feel confident about that prediction because this union has been fighting and winning for 80 years. You have fought for better wages, better working conditions for your own members, but you've done something more than that.-For 80 years, you've fought to make our country live up to its own ideals. You've never cared what color someone might be or what nationality or what language they might speak or what sex they are or what religion they practice, because this union is serious about equality and social justice and democracy.

Five weeks from tomorrow the American people will make a choice that will affect every gain that you have fought so hard to achieve for the last 80 years. All of those gains, all of that progress is at stake, from the minimum wage to human rights. Never in my lifetime has our country faced such a stark choice—between two parties, yes, between two candidates, yes, between two totally different philosophies, yes; also, between two futures, for you, for your families, for those you love, and for our country.

I came here to talk to you briefly about that choice and what it means to working people and, especially today, about working women. It should be an easy choice, because all you have to do is follow the same good advice the ILG has been giving for years. When you pick a candidate and when you pick a party, just look for the union label.

Before a candidate tells you what he's going to do, first find out what he's already done. I think that's a pretty good standard. Before someone says he's a friend of the working people, take a look at his record. Look at which candidate stands up for the needs of America's working people, which party looks out for the people who have to work day in and day out, which candidate has fought with you, alongside of you, when the working people's interests were at stake.

Let me tell you briefly where I stand, what I've been fighting for with your help since the first day I was inaugurated President.

I believe, as you do, that people have a right to a decent living, and that's why we fought together for the largest and most certain continual increase ever in history in the minimum wage. We won that fight over tremendous opposition, and now 4 million Americans are living better lives today and all Americans, because of that, really live better lives.

I believe, as you do, that in the nation with the richest agriculture in the history of the entire world there can be no excuse for allowing anyone to go hungry. And that's why you and I fought to eliminate the cash requirement for purchasing food stamps. And we won that fight, and a lot of people today are not hungry because we fought together.

And I believe, as you do, that every worker has a right to be employed in a place that's safe and healthy. And that's why we've worked to improve OSHA and successfully defended it against attempts to destroy it. These attempts might still be launched in the future, but with you and I working together they will not succeed, and Americans will be protected where they work.

And I believe, as you do, that the best way to put young people to work is not to guarantee them lower wages, but to give them the training and the work experience they need to fit into the job market. I want to make sure there's a job for every young person to fill. As a matter of fact, I want to be sure that in America, there is a job for every person who's able to work to fill.

Full employment is my goal, and full employment is your goal. And that's why I'm working with the ILG to protect jobs from unfair import competition. And that's why you and I've worked together to increase American textile exports. In the last 2 years, we've had some success. Textile imports in the last 2 years are down, and in the last 2 years, American exports of textiles are up $2 billion. That trend is in the right direction, and we're going to keep it moving that way. This is your characteristic, because for 80 years you have fought to eliminate the sweatshop. And we must not let the sweatshop win, from abroad, the battle that you won against the sweatshop here at home.

And for many reasons that I will not go into today, I believe that Government has the responsibility to deal with the challenge of foreign oil dependence. Recent news broadcasts make this vividly clear. I do not believe that the answer to that challenge is to do away with the windfall profits tax and to turn our energy future over to the oil companies. And if I should lose this election, that's what'll happen. Therefore, we will not lose.

And I also do not believe that the answer to our Nation's complex economic problems is a monstrous, ill-conceived tax giveaway to the very rich—Reagan-Kemp-Roth, a plan that would give the most to those who already have the most, a plan that may be the most ill-advised and inflationary proposal ever put before the Congress. I believe that the real answer is for you and me to work together not only to defeat Reagan-Kemp-Roth but also to defeat those who support it.

And more general in nature but equally important, I believe that the real answer is a good partnership between labor, business, and the public, to revitalize and to modernize American industry, to help American workers become even more productive and where necessary, better trained. With your help we will build that partnership and achieve those goals. Every one of these positions and many more that I could name carries the ILG union label, and so does this one: All Americans, women and men alike, should have the same fundamental rights. And those rights should be enshrined where the rights of Americans are supposed to be enshrined, in the Constitution of the United States of America.

We simply cannot afford top public officials who ignore the real problems of American working women, who would deny women the constitutional protection of their equal rights, who seem to believe that women, like children, should be seen and not heard. I totally reject that view. I support ERA. Not only do I support ERA, but my six predecessors in the White House also supported it, Democratic and Republican Presidents. Even the Republican Party supported ERA for 40 years, until this year. The new Republican leaders have turned their backs on American women. Some of them say they are not opposed to women's rights; they just want to let the States do it. That's what the enemies of women's suffrage said 70 years ago, "Leave it to the States." That's what the enemies of civil rights said 20 years ago, "Leave it to the State."

Throughout the United States there are hundreds and hundreds of laws that discriminate against women. Fragment this series of laws among 50 different States, and you get some idea of what leaving it to the States really means. Make no mistake, this is not just a theoretical question. Equal rights for women is a bread and butter issue. For every dollar that men are paid, women are only paid 59 cents for the same amount of work. That is wrong. In many parts of our country women cannot work or borrow or dispose of their property on equal terms. That, too, is wrong. Equal pay for equal work!

Equal pay for equal work is a standard that ILG set a long time ago. It's the time now that the rest of the country caught up with you. Women make up 43 percent of the work force; a fourth of American households are headed by women—more and more American families depend on the wages that women bring home. When we help women to achieve greater economic rights, we are helping the American family. That's why we must put muscle behind our antidiscrimination laws, why we've toughened the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, why I personally have appointed more women to top Federal positions and more women judges to the Federal bench than all previous Presidents in the 200-year history of our Nation combined. And that's why we have boosted women employees in the Federal Government by 66,000, at a time when overall Federal employment was going down because of increased efficiency. And that's why we've strengthened the support of day care, why we've pioneered pacesetting innovations like flexitime and compressed time to help women meet both job and family responsibilities.

I'm the father of a little girl, and I'm also the grandfather of a little girl, and I want them to have the same kind of opportunities that my sons and my grandsons have.

I'd like to remind you again that ERA is not just a question of laws; it's a clarion call to end an historic injustice. It's a signal that we are really one Nation, with liberty and justice for all—all men and, at long last, all women. You understand the special problems of working women, because more ILG'ers are working women, women who work to support themselves and their families, women whose paychecks are not a luxury but a necessity.

You've not had an easy historic road. The men and women of the ILG have worked to send your sons and daughters to college, to law school, to medical school, sometimes based on the lowest possible wage. One of my own assistants in the White House, in fact the one who helped me write this speech, is the grandson of two members of the old local 38. His grandmother was a sweatshop seamstress at a time when the great shirtwaist strike of 1909, when 20,000 people, most of them women, rose up to demand the right to be treated with simple human decency. That strike holds a lesson for today's battle for ERA. On the ILG picket lines, immigrant girls of 14 and 15 years of age were joined by wealthy women from the suffragist movement; the women of 5th Avenue and the women of the Lower East Side joined together in solidarity because both believed in the dignity of women as human beings and also because both groups of women believed in the promise of America.

All of us who are fighting for ERA today are part of that same battle which began so many years ago. We must persevere until the battle is won and the equal rights amendment is inscribed in the Constitution of the United States.

But let me say, in closing, that the rights of women, the rights of minorities, the rights of those who are afflicted and oppressed, the rights of free speech and free expression, the rights of working people to organize and bargain collectively-these are fundamental human rights. They are the rights that our Nation represents. These are the rights that are worth fighting for, and these are the rights of our Nation which I will defend as long as I am President.

Let me dip just once more into ILG history before I close. Many of you will remember the old Italian Dressmakers Local 89 radio program on WEVD. The program always began with a song. The title of the song was "Bread and Roses." That same phrase—"Bread and Roses"-was one of the most famous rallying cries of the early American labor movement. It meant, of course, that labor was not struggling only for material benefits, but for the value and the ideals that give life its meaning and its beauty.

That old rallying cry is as good a description as any of what our country means to our own people and also to people all over the world. I want to continue that struggle side by side with you over the next 4 years. So let us go forward together to win an election and to build a future that gives us bread—and roses, too.

Thank you very much, and God bless you.