WASHINGTON - As the 2016 presidential battle gets underway 18 months before Election Day AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today that "the labor movement's doors are open to any candidate who is serious about transforming our economy with high and rising wages."

In a live-streamed speech this morning from the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., Trumka said,

"We have created an agenda for shared prosperity called raising wages. It will be our inspiration and our measuring stick throughout the presidential campaign. Raising wages is grounded in a fundamental idea-that we can become a high-wage society, a society in which the people who do the work share in the wealth we create."

He also stressed that the labor movement opposes Fast Track, declaring, "We expect those who seek to lead our nation forward to oppose Fast Track. There is no middle ground, and the time for deliberations is drawing to a close."

Trumka pointed to the skepticism and cynicism many voters feel, noting that for generations national leaders have either "taken steps that worsened inequality or fiddled around the edges, trying to raise wages in an economy fundamentally built to lower wages."

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