[Senate Hearing 118-210]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-210; Pt. 1
STANDING UP AGAINST CORPORATE
GREED: HOW UNIONS ARE IMPROVING
THE LIVES OF WORKING FAMILIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
[before the]
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
----------
NOVEMBER 14, 2023
----------
Part 1 of 2
----------
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
STANDING UP AGAINST CORPORATE
GREED: HOW UNIONS ARE IMPROVING
THE LIVES OF WORKING FAMILIES
PART 1 OF 2
S. Hrg. 118-210; Pt. 1
STANDING UP AGAINST CORPORATE
GREED: HOW UNIONS ARE IMPROVING
THE LIVES OF WORKING FAMILIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
EXAMINING THE STANDING UP AGAINST CORPORATE GREED, FOCUS-
ING ON HOW UNIONS ARE IMPROVING THE LIVES OF WORKING FAM-
ILIES
__________
NOVEMBER 14, 2023
__________
Part 1 of 2
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
54-523 PDF WASHINGTON : 2024
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
BERNIE SANDERS (I), Vermont, Chairman
PATTY MURRAY, Washington BILL CASSIDY, M.D., Louisiana,
ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania Ranking Member
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin RAND PAUL, Kentucky
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
TIM KAINE, Virginia LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire MIKE BRAUN, Indiana
TINA SMITH, Minnesota ROGER MARSHALL, M.D., Kansas
BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JOHN HICKENLOOPER, Colorado TOMMY TUBERVILLE, Alabama
ED MARKEY, Massachusetts MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
TED BUDD, North Carolina
Warren Gunnels, Majority Staff Director
Bill Dauster, Majority Deputy Staff Director
Amanda Lincoln, Minority Staff Director
Danielle Janowski, Minority Deputy Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
STATEMENTS
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2023
Page
Part 1
Committee Members
Sanders, Hon. Bernie, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, Opening statement......................... 1
Cassidy, Hon. Bill, Ranking Member, U.S. Senator from the State
of Louisiana, Opening statement................................ 3
Witnesses
Fain, Shawn, International President, UAW, Detroit, MI........... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 7
O'Brien, Sean M., General President, International Brotherhood of
Teamsters, Washington, DC...................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 13
Summary statement............................................ 19
Nelson, Sara, International President, Association of Flight
Attendants-Communication Workers of America, Washington, DC.... 20
Prepared statement........................................... 23
Furchtgott Roth, Diana, Director, Center for Energy, Climate, and
Environment and The Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in Energy
and Environmental Policy, The Heritage Foundation, Washington,
DC............................................................. 33
Prepared statement........................................... 36
Higgins, Sean, Research Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute,
Arlington, VA.................................................. 39
Prepared statement........................................... 41
Summary statement............................................ 43
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Cassidy, Hon. Bill:
List of Plans in Critical, Declining, and Endangered Status.. 73
Fiat Chrysler's Guilty Plea.................................. 74
Casey, Hon. Robert:
Greed-flation Report......................................... 76
Sanders, Hon. Bernie:
Statement for the Record by The United Steel, Paper and
Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial
and Service Workers International Union (USW).............. 92
News clips-UAW............................................... 94
Statement for the Record Union of Concerned Scientists....... 109
UAW TA Combined Documents.................................... 120
Part 2
Sanders, Hon. Bernie:
UAW TA Combined Documents Continued.......................... 1033
QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD
Response by Shawn Fain, Sean O'Brien, and Sara Nelson to
questions of:
Sen. Lujan................................................... 2155
Response by Sean O'Brien to questions of:
Sen. Marshall................................................ 2157
Response by Sean O'Brien to questions of:
Sen. Murphy.................................................. 2158
Response by Sara Nelson, Shawn Fain, and Sean O'Brien to
questions of:
Sen. Murray.................................................. 2160
STANDING UP AGAINST CORPORATE
GREED: HOW UNIONS ARE IMPROVING
THE LIVES OF WORKING FAMILIES
----------
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
room 430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Bernard Sanders,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Sanders [presiding], Murray, Casey,
Baldwin, Hassan, Smith, Lujan, Hickenlooper, Markey, Cassidy,
Braun, Marshall, Tuberville, and Mullin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SANDERS
The Chair. The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions will come to order. The title of our hearing this
morning is, Standing Up Against Corporate Greed, How Unions Are
Improving the Lives of Working Families.
We are delighted that Shawn Fain, the President of the
United Auto Workers, Sean O'Brien, President of the Teamsters,
and Sarah Nelson, the President of the Flight Attendants Union,
are here with us today, and I look forward to their testimony.
Ranking Member Cassidy has invited Diana Furchtgott Roth
with the Heritage Foundation and Sean Higgins with the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, and we welcome them as well.
The issue we are talking about today is really not
complicated, and that is tens of millions of Americans are
struggling to put food on the table, pay their rent, get by
while the wealthiest people in this country are doing better
than they have ever done in the history of America.
What I hope every Member is interested in discussing is,
how do we change that? How do we create an economy that works
for all of us, all of our people, and not just the few? And
when we talk about the state of our economy and the working
class in America, there is a lot to be concerned about.
One of the issues that we don't talk about enough is that
over the last 50 years, 50 years, despite huge increases in
technology and worker productivity, the average American worker
is making about $50 a week less than he or she did 50 years
ago.
How did that happen? And I can remember growing up in a
working class family, in a working class neighborhood. Back
then, it was a few years ago. Most families had one person
working.
Mostly men. How does that happen? One worked, and today,
almost without exception you need two breadwinners to support
the family. How does that happen despite all of the new
technology and increase in worker productivity? And some of the
realities of today is that right now we have more income and
wealth inequality than any time since the Gilded Age.
Today in America, three people, we got to deal with this
from a moral and economic perspective. Three people have more
wealth than the bottom half of American society, 165 million
Americans today, while the people on top are doing phenomenally
well. 60 percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.
Today, while millions of ordinary people are struggling to
pay the rent, pay for childcare, and put food on the table, the
CEOs of major corporations are now making 350 times as much as
their average workers.
According to the RAND Corporation, not exactly a socialist
enterprise, over the last 50 years, there has been a massive
redistribution of wealth. Since 1975, over $50 trillion in
wealth has gone from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1
percent. And it is not just income and wealth inequality that
we have got to worry about.
We are seeing more and more concentration of ownership in
every sector of our economy. Fewer and fewer large corporations
control what is being produced and distributed. Meanwhile,
while that is going on, and that should be of major concern to
every American, certainly every Member of Congress, there is
some very good news out there.
That is what we are going to be discussing today. And that
is that all over this country, we are seeing workers standing
up and fighting back against the unprecedented level of
corporate greed taking place. This year alone, over 450,000
workers in America have gone on strike for better wages, better
benefits, and better working conditions. That is up 900 percent
compared to just 2 years ago.
Last year, union membership in America increased by 273,000
to a total of 14.3 million workers. Last year, employees in
nearly 2,600 worksites in America filed petitions with the NLRB
to form a union, up more than 50 percent from 2 years ago.
According to the latest Gallup poll, 67 percent of the
American people support labor unions. In other words, in
America today, more workers want to join unions. More workers
are joining unions, and more workers are going out on strike to
improve their working conditions than we have seen in a very
long time.
Many of those unions, we are going to hear about that
today, are winning very strong contracts for their workers. And
what we are seeing in these historic union victories are not
only improving the lives of union members, but that is
beginning to spill over into the lives of nonunion workers in
America as well.
We are going to be discussing this today, but just
magically don't know how it happened. We are seeing Honda just
announced that it would be increasing the wages of their
nonunion workers in America by 11 percent. Toyota 9 to 10
percent. Hyundai also announced a major increase just by
accident.
No doubt had nothing to do with what the UAW recently
accomplished after the Teamsters won a strong contract to
increase wages and benefits for their workers at UPS. Amazon
increased wages for its nonunion warehouse and delivery drivers
as well. And it is not just blue collar workers.
We are seeing white collar workers organize as well. In my
state and all over the country, you are seeing residents in
hospitals, doctors, MDs organizing. You are seeing nurses
organizing.
You are seeing young people on college campuses, graduate
students who really have been exploited for years, organizing
in large numbers. Obviously, we are seeing actors organizing as
well.
That is the good news. The bad news is that for far too
long, many corporations are doing everything that they can to
intimidate, coerce, threaten, or prevent workers from
exercising their Constitutional right to form a union and
negotiate a fair contract.
We all know why that is, because when workers are in a
union, they get substantially better wages, working conditions,
pensions, and other benefits.
That is why it is absolutely essential that we pass
legislation like the PRO Act, to make it easier for workers to
organize. So, with that, let me give the mic over to Senator
Cassidy.
Senator Cassidy.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CASSIDY
Senator Cassidy. Thank you, Chair Sanders. And Chair
Sanders has acknowledged the progress that has been made by
organized labor, which creates in my mind, a little bit of a
puzzle as to why we are having the hearing.
We are not conducting oversight and there doesn't seem to
be a legislative purpose. The title of this hearing suggests
that unions are functioning well, and it appears that they are,
and that means that partisan legislation like the PRO Act is
not necessary.
Unions have a good message, apparently, about their ability
to negotiate contracts on behalf of their members. If that is
true, then they don't need the PRO Act to eliminate secret
ballot union elections, which could expose workers to
retaliation and intimidation.
Unions shouldn't need the PRO Act to open workers to forced
or coerced unionization by banning right to work laws in States
like Louisiana, in my state, that protect workers' freedom to
choose whether to join a union or not.
They should not need--the union should not need the PRO Act
or the Biden administration to impose radical joint employer
rules to make it easier to unionize the 8 million franchise
workers while undermining the business model of the
establishments that employ them. If unions can convince workers
that it is in their best interest to join, then there shouldn't
be changes to the independent contractor definition.
This policy, including the PRO Act, would take away the
ability of 27 million workers to choose how to earn a living.
Why? Well, effectively to make them susceptible to forced or
coerced unionization. Now I support a worker's ability to
unionize.
The right of workers to organize and be represented by a
union is protected under the National Labor Relations Act. But
if the benefits of joining a union are so good, and I am sure
that is the testimony we will hear today, then there is no
reason union should have to coerce or strong arm people to
join.
They certainly don't need Government to help them coerce
and strong arm. I will remind my colleagues that this Committee
already voted on the PRO Act with all Republicans opposing.
There is no sign that the Majority Leader will bring it to the
Senate floor, and it doesn't even have unanimous support from
Democrats.
But regardless, this Committee has already devoted a markup
to progressive legislation on unionizing and bargaining. So,
what is the purpose of today's hearing other than holding, I
hate to say it, a taxpayer funded pep rally for big labor
unions.
We have public health programs that expired September 30th,
and we haven't had a hearing for the last 2 weeks. There are
serious unmet responsibilities of this Committee, but this
issue takes precedence and is most deserving of our time.
If we wish to celebrate those achievements that unions have
recently achieved, that is the Chair's prerogative. But we
should point out that it has been 54 days since this Committee
has held a markup or hearing to consider actual legislation.
Hopefully we can get back on track and use the limited time
we have this year to get the rest of our reauthorizations over
the finish line. With that, I yield.
The Chair. Thank you, Senator Cassidy. Now, we will hear
from our witnesses. Our first witness is Shawn Fain, the
International President of the United Automobile Workers.
Mr. Fain is a 29 year member of the UAW and got his start
with union as an electrician at Chrysler Kokomo casting plant.
He served this local union at every level and was elected UAW
President this year in the first ever direct election for the
union's executive board.
Mr. Fain, thanks for being with us.
STATEMENT OF SHAWN FAIN, INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT,
UAW, DETROIT, MI
Mr. Fain. Thank you, Chairman Sanders. Good morning, and
good morning, Dr. Cassidy and Members of the Committee. I am
honored to join this hearing as the first directly elected
International President of the UAW, representing over 400,000
active members and 600,000 retired members across a wide range
of sectors from auto manufacturing to higher education.
My roots in the auto industry run very deep back to the
first early days of the UAW, when my grandparents, my--one of
my grandfathers was hired in Chrysler in 1937, the year the UAW
organized Chrysler. That job was life changing for my
grandparents, all four of them. Their generation came out of a
Great Depression.
All four of my grandparents migrated from the South in
extreme poverty conditions. One of my grandparents was hurt and
siblings were left in an orphanage because their parents
couldn't afford to raise them.
When they moved North and were able to get good paying
union jobs, it changed their lives. It is the reason I am
sitting here today. That changed the entire trajectory for my
family.
I share that same pride when I was hired in 29 years ago.
But throughout my 29 years as a UAW member, I have seen drastic
changes. I witnessed our working standards and conditions
eroded at the hand of bad trade agreements designed to drive a
race to the bottom.
Many of the decisions were being made under the guise of
helping the companies be more competitive, which helping
competition in my world is code for corporate greed and a race
to the bottom because that is what it drives. Find the lowest
paying person and compare yourself to that.
That is not something we should aspire to be as a Nation.
Workers got caught on the losing end of a one sided class war.
This led to the big three closing or spinning off 65 plants in
the last 20 years.
In 2009, our members were unfairly villainized for
everything that ailed the big three. Our members, both active
and retired, made massive sacrifices, such as the suspension of
cost of living, jobs--language provisions, just to name a few.
All those sacrifices borne by our members were made to help
the big three stay afloat and remain competitive, and all that
did was feed corporate greed and continued a race to the
bottom.
Despite that, and despite the plant closures that tore
apart communities and how our members lives were turned upside
down, our members have always delivered. With recent success in
the big three, our union just showed the world what is possible
when workers unite to fight for more, to fight against
corporate greed.
Workers can win. Only a small percentage of working class
Americans have the protection afforded by collective
bargaining. Rather, the mass majority are treated like second
class citizens employed at the will of employers.
We want better for America, and you should want better for
Americans. In the past 6 months, we began to turn the tide in
this class war for the American worker. On September 14th, the
UAW launched our Stand Up strike. It was a new strategy to take
on corporate greed at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis,
which is Chrysler's parent company.
It allowed us to integrate our members into a national
campaign where workers strikes strategically grew and escalated
over time, giving our union bargaining teams maximum power to
negotiate a record contract for the first time in our history.
We struck at all three companies and in less than 7 weeks.
We want justice for our members and other workers. We won
things our industry hasn't seen in over 15 years. Victories
that will instantly change people's lives overnight. Getting
back to setting a standard, giving people purchasing power to
move the economy.
Never in our history we negotiated the reopening of a
plant. We won victories that will instantly, overnight change
life. Belvidere, Illinois was written off for dead. As many
people know, we not only got work back for that plant, but also
a new battery plant. Both these plants are going to add
thousands of jobs to the Belvidere, Illinois community.
That is what the union can achieve through collective
bargaining. There is far too much in our agreement to detail in
a short testimony. But for the major areas, we raise wages
dramatically for over 100,000 workers.
We took a major step toward ensuring a just transition in
electric vehicles. We improved retirement security for hundreds
of thousands of retirees. And last, we secured jobs. Job
security was a major part of this bargaining for current
employees and future members. And we bargained for language
that allows us to strike these companies if they don't honor
their commitments, which has been a huge issue in the past.
Looking at the success of our contract, we are seeing that
spill over into the nonunion industry after we announced our
tentative agreements. But the big three, Toyota made an
unprecedented move and reduced their progression to full pay to
4 years from 8 years.
They gave their employees a 9 percent pay increase. Honda
raised wages 11 percent. And just yesterday, Hyundai announced
that they are going to follow our pattern and raise wages by 25
percent for their employees through the year 2028.
We call that the UAW bump, and that stands for you are
welcome. And we are very proud of that. And when these members
and these workers decide to organize and join the UAW, they are
going to realize the full benefit of union membership and get
what they fully do. We know the fears being put out there now.
Nonunion companies are doing this because they are scared.
They are scared that their workers see a better life and the
companies trying to head that off. They have used fear,
uncertainty, and division to try to break the unions. And I
promise you, here, those days are over.
The American public overwhelmingly supported what we have
done. 75 percent of Americans said they supported our
initiatives. The American public is fed up with an economy that
works for the benefit of the billionaire class at the expense
of the working class.
The working class in this country is fed up and will not
fall for a union busting playbook for any closed plants, firing
union activists, pitting workers against each other. We are
going to organize like hell to help thousands of workers in
this country, primarily in the South, to win their union and
raise the living standards in this free entire working class.
We have no interest in being a private welfare state. The
working class needs this Committee and the entire Congress to
step up. You all have an essential role to play, not only
supporting our fights and other fights like ours, but to finish
the job for economic and social justice for the entire working
class.
We want to organize. We want the working class to organize,
to bring dignity to their work, and enjoy the fruits of
unionism and have a voice on the job. So, for that, we need to
marshal the Federal Government, not just as allies cheering
from the sidelines. We need a pro-worker Congress, guided by a
vision of liberty and justice for all.
Elected leaders that understand that economic justice is a
national security risk for all of those who don't have it. It
is a fight worth fighting for. We must bring that fight into
the workplace as well as the streets, but also in the halls of
power in the chambers of the U.S. Senate.
The UAW won wage increases from 33 to 250 percent over the
life of this four and a half year agreement for our members----
The Chair. Mr. Fain, I am going to ask you to--finish up.
Mr. Fain. Okay. Thank you. We won for the first time in 15
years, meaningful gains. And one thing I will leave you with,
there are three crises that we need to deal with, income
inequality, a transition to a green economy.
We have to have an economy, an environment we can live in,
sustainable, and retirement security. They are all linked, and
they are the fight for our future. What kind of economy do we
want to live in?
What kind of planet do we want to live on, and what kinds
of lives are we going to lead? Walter Reuther, the great leader
of the UAW in the 20th century, spoke of our union as the
American vanguard.
As he said, we don't mind leading. We don't mind being the
first to take action. We don't mind striking for social and
economic justice. It is a duty and the privilege of the UAW to
lead. But we need reinforcements.
If this Committee wishes to live up to its name, the HELP
Committee, it is time to help the cause of economic and social
justice in this country by bringing victories to the auto
workers. Just realize that the entire working class, especially
in public education, is a group we haven't talked much about.
But we need to look out for all of them. Public education
has been villainized and it is time to put the working class
first. So, thank you for having me today and being able to
testify on behalf of the UAW members.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fain follows:]
prepared statement of shawn fain
Good morning, Chairman Sanders, Dr. Cassidy, and Members of the
Committee.
I am honored to join this hearing as the International President of
the UAW, proudly representing close to 400,000 active members and
nearly 600,000 retirees, across a wide range of sectors, from auto
manufacturing to higher education.
My roots in the auto industry run back to the early days when my
Grandpa was hired in at Chrysler in 1937, the year the UAW first
organized Chrysler.
That job was life-changing for my Grandpa. His generation took
pride in not only being a UAW member, but in working for a Big Three
company to build cars for America. It changed the entire trajectory for
my family. I shared that same pride when I was hired in, too.
But throughout my 29 years as a UAW member, I've seen drastic
changes. I witnessed our working standards and conditions eroded at the
hands of bad trade agreements designed to drive a race to the bottom.
Many of the decisions were being made under the guise of ``helping''
the companies be more competitive. Code word for corporate greed.
Workers got caught on the losing end of a ``one-sided class war.''
This led to the Big Three closing or spinning off 65 plants in the
past 20 years. In 2009, UAW members were unfairly villainized for all
that ailed the Big Three. Our members, both active and retired, made
massive sacrifices such as the suspension of COLA and job security
language provisions, just to name a few. All these sacrifices bore by
our members were made to help the Big Three stay afloat and remain
``competitive,'' all to feed corporate greed.
Despite that, and the plant closures that tore apart communities,
and how our members' lives turned upside down, our members always
delivered.
With our recent success with the Big Three, our union just showed
the world what's possible when workers unite to fight for more, fight
against corporate greed. Workers win.
But only a small percentage of working-class Americans have the
protections afforded by collective bargaining. Rather the vast majority
are treated as second-class citizens, employed at the will of
employers. We want better for America--and so should you. You should
want better for Americans.
In the past 6 months, we have begun to turn the tide in that class
war for the American worker.
On September 14, the UAW launched our Stand Up Strike. This was a
new strategy to take on corporate greed at Ford, General Motors, and
Stellantis, Chrysler's parent company. It allowed us to integrate our
members into a national campaign where worker strikes strategically
grew and escalated over time, giving our union's bargaining teams
maximum power to negotiate and win a record contract.
For the first time in UAW's history, we struck at all three
companies. And in less than 7 weeks on strike, we won.
What started at three auto assembly plants grew to nearly 50,000
autoworkers going on strike at a time of soaring corporate profits and
falling real wages. We said record profits mean record contracts. And
that's what we achieved.
We won things in this contract that our industry hasn't seen in 15
years or more. We won victories that will instantly--overnight--change
the lives of thousands of families across this country. Over time, it
will transform communities, adding thousands of jobs and massively
boosting the purchasing power of working-class families.
Never in our history have we negotiated the reopening of a plant.
That all changed with this contract. Belvidere Assembly in Illinois was
written off for dead when they laid off the remaining 1,300 workers. We
not only got the company to reopen the assembly plant, but we also
negotiated for a new battery plant. Both of these plants will add
thousands of jobs to save the Belvidere community. That's what a union
can achieve.
There's far too much in our agreement to detail in a short
testimony, but I want to highlight four major areas in which we fought
and won. In each case, we addressed a core, existential issue for the
entire working class.
One, we raised wages dramatically for over a hundred thousand
workers.
Two, we took a major step toward ensuring a just transition to
electric vehicles.
Three, we improved the retirement security for hundreds of
thousands of our members.
Lastly, we secured jobs for our current employees and future
members and bargained for language that allows us to strike these
companies if they do not honor their commitments to the workers.
In looking at the success of our contract, each gain is monumental,
but it was only a first step. We won as big as we could, restored most
of what had been taken away, in one contract, for only one workforce.
What we won has already begun spilling over into the non-union auto
industry. After we announced our tentative agreements at the Big Three,
Toyota made an announcement of their own. As reported by Labor Notes,
Toyota suddenly made the decision to shorten the progression to top
wage for their workers and to give their employees a 9-percent raise.
Over the weekend, Honda announced they had reduced their
progression to top pay to 3 years and gave an 11 percent raise--the
exact same first-year amount raise the UAW won at the Big Three.
We call it the UAW bump: that stands for ``U. Are. Welcome.''
Every one of these workers is welcome in our union, to receive the
full benefit of membership and working standards generations of UAW
members have fought for and won. Already, thousands of these workers
are reaching out and signing union cards.
We know these non-union companies are doing this because they're
scared. They're scared that their workers will see that a better life
is possible once they organize into a union. And these companies are
trying to head that off.
For decades, non-union auto companies have used fear, uncertainty,
and division to break union drives in our industry. I'm here to promise
you that those days are over.
The American public overwhelmingly supported our fight against
corporate greed at the Big Three. That is because the American public
is fed up with an economy that works to the benefit of the billionaire
class, not the working class. The American public sees their employers
making out like bandits while workers are continuing to fall further
behind.
The working class in this country is fed up and will not fall for
the union-busting playbook of threatening to close plants, firing union
activists, and pitting workers against each other.
We are organizing like hell to help thousands of autoworkers in
this country, primarily in the South, to win their union and raise the
living standards for the working-class.
The UAW just went on strike like we've never gone on strike before.
Now we are going to organize like we've never organized before, because
our strike has shown the Nissan worker in Alabama, and the Volkswagen
worker in Tennessee, and the Toyota worker in Kentucky, and the Tesla
worker in California that when union members win, the entire working-
class wins.
Still, it is not enough for us to just win stronger contracts
across the auto industry.
We have no interest in being a private welfare state.
Now, the working class needs this Committee, and the entire
Congress to step up. You all have an essential role to play. Not only
in supporting our fights and other fights like ours. But to finish the
job for economic and social justice for the entire working class.
We want the entire working class to organize, to bring dignity to
their work, enjoy the fruits of unionism, and to have a voice on and
off the job.
For that, we need the muscle of the Federal Government. Not just as
allies cheering from the sidelines. We need a pro-worker Congress
guided by a vision of liberty and justice for all. Elected leaders that
understand that economic justice is a national security risk for all of
us if people don't have it, feel it. This is a fight worth fighting
for. We must bring that fight into the workplace, as well as in the
streets. But also, in the halls of power and the chambers of the US
Senate.
The UAW won wage increases ranging from 33 to 250 percent over the
life of this 4.5 year contract for our members. But the working class
as a whole is suffering from horrifying income and wealth inequality.
If the Federal Government is interested in addressing the economic
crisis of the working class, they have to follow the UAW's lead and
help make employers raise wages and benefits for workers everywhere.
We won electric vehicle and battery plants under our national
agreements, maintaining our standards in the new auto industry. We were
told it was impossible, even illegal. We were told the green economy
had to be a race to the bottom, and there was nothing anyone could do
about it. But UAW members rejected that false choice, that it can only
be either green auto jobs or good auto jobs. The UAW just proved that
it can and must be both. But if the Federal Government is interested in
addressing the economic impact of a green transition, they have to
follow the UAW's lead and ensure a just transition for workers
everywhere.
We also won, for the first time in over 15 years, meaningful gains
in retirement security for all our Big Three members and retirees. And
yet one of the most harmful and divisive tiers in our union remains:
those hired after the Great Recession still do not have a pension or
post-retirement healthcare. If the Federal Government is interested in
addressing the economic evil of retirement insecurity, they have to
follow the UAW's lead and guarantee a secure retirement for workers
everywhere.
These three crises--income inequality, the transition to a green
economy, and retirement insecurity--are all linked. They are the fight
for our future. What kind of economy will we live in? What kind of
planet will we live on? And what kinds of lives will we lead?
Walter Reuther, the great UAW leader of the 20th century, spoke of
our union as the American vanguard:
We don't mind leading.
We don't mind being the first to take action.
We don't mind striking for social and economic justice.
It is the duty and the privilege of the UAW to lead.
But we need reinforcements.
If this Committee wishes to live up to its name, the HELP
Committee, it is time to help the cause of economic and social justice
in this country by bringing the victories union autoworkers just won,
and those we have yet to win, to the entire working class.
Thank you for having me today and allowing me to testify on behalf
of the great members of the United Auto Workers Union.
______
The Chair. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Fain. Our next
witness is Sean O'Brien, the General President of the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Mr. O'Brien is a fourth generation Teamster and got his
start with Teamsters Local 25 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, as
a heavy equipment driver at the age of 18. Mr. O'Brien, thanks
very much for being with us.
STATEMENT OF SEAN M. O'BRIEN, GENERAL PRESIDENT,
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, WASH-
INGTON, DC
Mr. O'Brien. Thank you very much, Chairman Sanders. Ranking
Member, Dr. Cassidy, Committee Members.
Thank you for inviting me to testify today about how unions
are improving the lives of American working families. I am Sean
O'Brien, General President, International Brotherhood of
Teamsters. Let me start with a simple fact, workers who belong
to a union earn better wages and benefits than workers who
aren't union members.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average
union worker makes 18 percent more than their nonunion
counterparts. Early this year, the Teamsters negotiated the
largest private sector collective bargaining agreement in North
America at UPS, United Parcel Service.
More than 340,000 UPS teams have shown the world the
positive difference belonging to a union makes for working
people. The Teamsters' national contract with UPS secured more
for our members than any other single agreement in the 20 year
history of our great union.
This victory included historic wage increases for all full
and part time workers, no forced overtime, air conditioning,
and new package cars, heat shields, and ventilation ducts on
existing vehicles.
No more two tier wage systems, and equal footing for all
workers, raises for part time workers in our new UPS contract
to hire than all wage increases given to part timers in the
last 40 years combined.
For the first time ever, the Teamsters successfully clawed
back concessions at UPS made in previous contracts. This
historic new 5 year agreement is by far the best contract ever
secured for American workers at UPS.
Throughout our campaign, it was necessary to show the
public what it looks like when real people get up in the
morning and go to work at UPS. These are hard jobs. They wear
people down. They are also essential jobs in every sense of the
word. Today's world, all of us rely on parcel delivery more
than we ever have before. This country does not move without
the hard work of Teamsters at UPS.
This includes the package car drivers in the iconic brown
trucks, the feeder drivers making long haul deliveries, the
women and men getting up at 3.00 a.m. to work those warehouses.
The unsung heroes the public never sees who move those boxes to
load and unload those trucks.
None of us are getting our packages without those dedicated
part time workers. The more we told the story of UPS Teamsters,
the stronger our fight got against this giant corporation.
Every poll showed the public was on the side of the workers.
The American people will always appreciate and respect hard
work.
Our members knew that and felt it every week of our battle
for a new agreement. When it was said and done, UPS Teamsters
won a $30 billion contract. We did it without being forced to
go on strike by running a fierce practice picket campaign
nationwide and by fighting harder than ever before at the
bargaining table.
This is a contract that sets the tone of what is happening
in the labor movement today. Interest in unions is at an all-
time high and for good reasons. Just look at a unionized
company like UPS and compare it to nonunion Amazon who do the
same job every single day. Both companies have tough, stressful
working environments, but workers in Amazon are twice as likely
to be injured on the job.
Workers in Amazon are under constant surveillance and fear
of losing their jobs. A regular package car driver at UPS makes
twice as much as an Amazon delivery driver and under the
independent contractor model. Under the Teamsters' new
agreement, UPS workers are the highest paid delivery drivers in
America.
Full time UPS Teamsters receive more than $40 per hour and
benefits compared to Amazon drivers who receive a benefit
package of less than $10 per hour. Part time UPS receive four
times more in hourly benefits than current warehouse workers at
Amazon.
Thanks to a Teamster contract, there is no comparing UPS
Teamsters and nonunion Amazon employees and how they are
compensated or treated. For a company as rich as Amazon to
treat their employees so badly is a disgrace.
I want the Members of this Committee to ask themselves
this, would you want your child to deliver packages for Amazon
knowing the company's long track record of abusive mistreatment
of workers? You cannot possibly answer this in the affirmative.
Not one of you. When you go to work at UPS as a Teamster,
you get the highest wages in the industry, you get a pension,
you get real protections on the job, and you get a fully paid
health care plan that is better than the one I have as a
General President of the Teamsters. Where else are you seeing
that across this U.S. economy?
Virtually nowhere. This is why there were so many stories
online about job searches online for UPS careers after we
ratified this contract. This is why Amazon gave warehouse
workers a raise while the Teamsters were winning our contract
fight at UPS. I am sure my friend Sean Fain can say a word or
two about the raises given out at Tesla and Toyota following
his union's victories against the big three as well.
There is no coincidence here. Union victories and contract
wins don't just affect union members, they positively impact
all working people in this country. As we speak, 5,000
Teamsters nationwide are negotiating a new contract with
Anheuser-Busch. Right now, we have more than 1,100 Teamsters
standing up to DHL to bargain a first contract at the
Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Airport.
In a few months, more than 7,000 Teamsters in Hollywood
will fight along IATSE to take on the big movie and TV studios.
Just as the WGA and the SAG-AFTRA members were forced out on
strike this year, we have our own battle brewing with the
AMPTP.
The fight to raise wages and improve the standard of living
for American workers never ends. It is an uphill battle every
day against giant corporations who want to pocket all the money
or spend it on gaming our political system.
America labor laws do nothing when employers refuse to
negotiate a first contract after workers choose to join a
union. This is one of the primary reasons why union membership
continues to decline despite workers' interests and unions
being higher than ever.
American workers want unions. They have a right to join or
form a union, but employers will try everything they can to
deny that right to working people. When these same people have
friends on Capitol Hill who help them get away with it, the
potential for workers to get ahead in this country further
disappears.
If we want to make America a better country, we have to
stop letting corporations destroy the middle class through
their abuse and exploitation of workers. We have to advocate
for workers and really fight for them. And it can't just be the
Teamsters doing the heavy lifting. We need your help.
We need our elected officials to do more and do what is
right. In recent months, the Teamsters have been building
greater bipartisan support across our Government to protect
workers' interests.
This includes Senators and representatives brave enough to
put into writing their support for UPS Teamsters fighting for a
just contract. Most recently, Republicans, Democrats in this
chamber continue to stand up to back our efforts to rebuild
good union frayed jobs in the wake of yellow's collapse. From
Senator Josh Hawley, to Senator Roger Marshall, to Senator
Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Bernie Sanders, the Teamsters are
eager to build bipartisan coalitions where we can help working
people. This is what it should be about.
We have to put more money in workers' pockets. That is what
the Teamsters just did at UPS. It is what unions are doing all
over the country and American workers are paying attention.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. O'Brien follows:]
prepared statement of sean m. o'brien
Good morning, Chairman Senator Sanders, Ranking Member Dr. Cassidy,
distinguished Members of the Committee. My name is Sean O'Brien. I
serve as the General President of the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
When I was last here, we discussed corporate America's
longstanding, systematic, and often illegal attacks on working people
who organize to form unions. Today, with the Teamsters having ratified
the largest and most comprehensive private-sector collective bargaining
agreement in North America at United Parcel Service (UPS), I am here to
talk about how organized worker power and a union contract are the
antidote to corporate greed.
In August, rank-and-file members voted by an overwhelming 86.3
percent to ratify the most lucrative contract in the history of the
Teamsters at UPS. The agreement passed by the highest vote ever for a
Teamsters contract at UPS. There is no larger union contract with a
single employer than the UPS Teamsters National Master Agreement. This
5-year contract protects and rewards more than 340,000 UPS Teamsters in
the United States and Puerto Rico, raising wages for full-and part-time
workers, creating more full-time jobs, and securing important workplace
protections, including--for the first time--air conditioning in new
package cars and heat shields and ventilation ducts in existing
vehicles, which will protect the safety and health of our members.
When I was last here, there was some confusion about pay rates for
UPS feeder drivers. To be crystal clear, prior to passage of this new
5-year contract, UPS feeder drivers, who are paid hourly, made $41.59
per hour, with most making time-and-a-half paid at over 8 hours per
day. At 2,080 hours (typical 40-hour work week x 52 weeks) that's
$86,507 per year. When you add 10 hours of overtime per week (which is
on the very low end) that puts the average Feeder Driver at around
$119,000 per year. However, most Feeder Drivers work something closer
to 18 to 20 hours of overtime per week, putting them at around $145,000
per year. Mileage Drivers and Sleeper Teams make even more. On their
own website, UPS asserted, pre-contract ratification that Feeder
Drivers made an average of $162,000 per year even more. On their own
website, UPS asserted, pre-contract ratification that Feeder Drivers
made an average of $162,000 per year. \1\ Now, they make more.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ https://about.ups.com/sg/en/our-company/great-employer.html
See Article 53 and note addition of $1.15/hr COLA increase https://
teamster.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ups18atlanticareasupp.pdf.
Highlights of the 2023-2028 UPS Teamsters National Master Agreement
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
include:
Historic wage increases. Existing full-and part-time
UPS Teamsters received no less than $2.75 more per hour in
2023. Over the length of the contract, wage increases will
total at least $7.50 per hour.
Existing part-timers were raised up to no less than
$21 per hour immediately, and part-time seniority workers
earning more under a market rate adjustment still received all
new general wage increases.
General wage increases for part-time workers are
double the amount obtained in the previous UPS Teamsters
contract--and existing part-time workers will receive a 48
percent average total wage increase over the next 5 years.
Wage increases for full-timers will keep UPS
Teamsters the highest paid delivery drivers in the Nation,
improving their average top rate to $49 per hour.
Current UPS Teamsters working part-time will receive
longevity wage increases of up to $1.50 per hour on top of new
hourly raises, compounding their earnings.
New part-time hires at UPS start at $21 per hour and
will advance to $23 per hour.
All UPS Teamster drivers classified as 22.4s were
reclassified immediately to Regular Package Car Drivers and
placed into seniority, ending the unfair two-tier wage system
at UPS.
Safety and health protections, including vehicle air
conditioning and cargo ventilation. UPS will equip in-cab A/C
in all larger delivery vehicles, sprinter vans, and package
cars purchased after Jan. 1, 2024. All cars get two fans and
air induction vents in the cargo compartments.
All UPS Teamsters now receive Martin Luther King Day
as a full holiday for the first time.
No more forced overtime on Teamster drivers' days
off. Drivers will keep one of two workweek schedules and cannot
be forced into overtime on scheduled off-days.
UPS Teamster part-timers will have priority to
perform all seasonal support work using their own vehicles with
a locked-in 8-hour guarantee. For the first time, seasonal work
will be contained to 5 weeks only from November-December.
The creation of 7,500 new full-time Teamster jobs at
UPS and the fulfillment of 22,500 open positions, establishing
more opportunities through the life of the agreement for part-
timers to transition to full-time work.
More than 60 total changes and improvements to the
National Master Agreement--more than any other time in
Teamsters history--and zero concessions from the rank-and-file.
Teamsters at UPS fought for these gains. The presence of a union
contract levels the playing field and legally requires an employer to
bargain, but it does not mean that the employer will be fair. Union or
nonunion, there's no such thing as a benevolent employer.
Throughout the bargaining process, corporate interest groups and
their representatives used all the expected fear tactics to try to
convince the public and government officials at all levels that paying
UPS Teamsters their fair share would harm the economy, consumers, and
small businesses. As usual, some in Congress took the bait, but none of
that fearmongering was accurate.
The truth is that rank-and-file UPS Teamsters sacrificed everything
to get this country through a pandemic and enabled UPS to reap record-
setting profits. \2\ Teamsters at UPS demanded their fair share of
those profits, which they earned through their hard work. The more we
told the story of UPS Teamsters, the stronger our fight got against
this giant corporation. Every poll showed the public was on the side of
our members because the American people will always appreciate and
respect hard work. \3\ The Teamsters achieved this historic contract by
engaging our members, running a fierce practice picket campaign
nationwide, and by fighting harder than ever before at the bargaining
table. Our members posed a credible strike threat and UPS knew we were
serious about getting the best contract possible. We got UPS to put $30
billion in new money on the table, winning big wage increases and
protections, all without our members having to go on strike.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ https://www.ajc.com/news/business/ups-profit-soared-above-10b-
in-21-sees-revenue-topping-100b-in-22/2H5Q5CCQ5RBFLKRDLGYLTTZNCM/.
\3\ https://aflcio.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/GBAO%20AFL-
CIO%20Labor%20Day%20Poll%20Memo.pdf
The Teamsters continue the fight at other employers. Right now,
5,000 Teamsters nationwide are negotiating a contract with Anheuser-
Busch. More than 1,100 Teamsters are standing up to DHL to bargain a
first contract at the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky airport. In just a
few months, more than 7,000 Teamsters in Hollywood will join IATSE in
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
taking on the big movie and TV studios.
The fight on behalf of American workers never ends. Corporate
America and its C-suite leadership will never willingly relinquish
their power or wealth. As I outlined in detail before this Committee in
March, our broken labor law, tax law, antitrust law, and corporate
bankruptcy law work to the favor of corporations and the wealthy. Weak
laws with gaping loopholes only favor the consolidation of corporate
wealth, not the interests of American workers.
In 2019, families in the top 10 percent held 72 percent of total
wealth, and families in the top 1 percent held more than one-third;
families in the bottom half held only 2 percent of total wealth. \4\ In
October 2022, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) published a report on
the productivity pay gap. The report showed that, unlike prior decades,
from 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8 percent, while the hourly
pay of typical workers increased only 17.5 percent over four decades.
The wealth generated by increased productivity isn't going to workers.
Additional research by EPI concludes that compensation of top CEOs
increased 1,460.2 percent from 1978 to 2021. Top CEO compensation grew
roughly 37 percent faster than stock market growth during this period
and far eclipsed growth in a typical worker's annual compensation.
Increased wealth also went into higher profits like returns to
shareholders. \5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57598.
\5\ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/; https://
www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2021/.
The extreme consolidation of wealth and power in this country is a
crisis that deserves Congress' immediate and full attention, but
working Americans are not waiting to be saved by their elected
officials. Workers are taking action to improve their standard of
living, stay safe, and have a voice at work by organizing and building
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
worker power.
Union support is at an all-time high. A Gallup survey in August
2022 found 71 percent of Americans approve of unions. \6\ During the
first 9 months of Fiscal Year 2022, union representation petitions
filed at the NLRB increased 58 percent. \7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-
highest-point-1965.aspx.
\7\ https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/correction-
first-three-quarters-union-election-petitions-up-58-exceeding.
A recent analysis of the effects of union membership on wealth
shows that being part of a union is associated with greater wealth for
working-class families and especially working-class families of color.
\8\ Because of this effect, unions are a crucial means for building
wealth among the working class and reducing racial wealth gaps for
workers without 4-year college degrees. The key findings of this report
include:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2022/6/
jec-ed-and-labor-release-new-report-on-economic-benefits-of-unions.
Working-class union households hold nearly four times
as much median wealth ($201,240) as the typical working-class
nonunion household ($52,221), suggesting that membership vastly
increases wealth for working-class families. \9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/unions-build-wealth-
for-the-american-working-class/.
Union membership helps close the wealth gap between
working-class and college-educated households. While the median
wealth of working-class nonunion households is just 17 percent
that of college-educated nonunion households, the median wealth
of working-class union households is 67 percent that of
college-educated nonunion households. \10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/unions-build-wealth-
for-the-american-working-class/.
An August 2023 report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury
found that the positive effects of unions are not limited to union
workers. The report concluded that nonunionized firms in competition
with unionized workplaces may choose to raise wages, change hiring
practices, or improve their workplace environment to attract workers.
Unions can also affect workplace norms by lobbying for workplace safety
improvements or advocating for changes in minimum wage laws. The
empirical evidence finds that these positive spillovers exist. Each 1
percentage point increase in private-sector union membership rates
translates to about a 0.3 percent increase in nonunion wages. These
estimates are larger for workers without a college degree, the majority
of America's workforce. \11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions-
and-the-us-economy.
Unions may also produce benefits for communities that extend beyond
individual workers and employers by enhancing social capital and civic
engagement. Union members vote 12 percentage points more often than
nonunion workers, and nonunion workers in union households vote 3
percentage points more often than individuals in nonunion households.
In addition, union members are more likely to donate to charity, attend
community meetings, participate in a neighborhood project, and
volunteer for an organization. \12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions-
and-the-us-economy.
As Chair Sanders wrote in The Nation, for much of the 20th century
there was a shared understanding of the role unions needed to play, not
just in improving the circumstances of workers but in providing a
counterbalance to powerful business interests. The corporate world
understands that strong unions can put a check on the kinds of greed,
exploitation, and unilateral decision-making that exist in nonunion
companies. \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bernie-sanders-
angry-about-capitalism/.
It's simple. As a country, we can choose to collectively encourage
the growth of good union jobs that pay family sustaining wages and
allow those good jobs to set the standard for competition within an
industry or we can continue to allow companies like Amazon to dominate
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
and drive a race to the bottom for working people.
Teamsters changed the game at UPS, battling it out day and night to
make sure our members won an agreement that pays strong wages, rewards
their labor, and doesn't require a single concession. This new contract
sets a new standard in the labor movement and raises the bar for all
workers.
Prior to ratification of the Teamsters' new contract, UPS drivers
averaged $39 per hour in wages and $36 per hour in benefits compared to
Amazon drivers who averaged $21 per hour in wages and $9 per hour in
benefits. Part-time workers at UPS averaged $22 per hour in wages and
$24 per hour in benefits compared to Amazon part-time warehouse workers
who averaged $18 per hour in wages and $7 per hour in benefits.
When you go to work at UPS as a Teamster, you get the highest wages
in the industry, you get a pension, you get real protections on the
job, and you get a fully paid health care plan that's better than the
one I have as General President of the Teamsters. These wages and
benefits apply to all full-and part-time workers. Where else are you
seeing that across the U.S. economy? Virtually nowhere. This is why
there were so many stories about online job searches for UPS careers
skyrocketing after news of our contract. It is why Amazon gave
warehouse workers a raise while the Teamsters were in the middle of
winning our contract fight at UPS and again for delivery drivers
shortly after contract ratification. \14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/aug/08/everyone-wants-
to-work-at-ups-after-union-scores-1/; https://www.reuters.com/business/
amazon-raises-wages-warehouse-workers-insider-2022-09-28/; https://
www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/amazon-invests-over840-million-
in-dsp-rates-and-new-driver-programs.
Amazon knows what the union difference means for workers in the
delivery and logistics industries. That's why the company does all that
it can to obstruct worker power, beginning with union busting and
intimidation tactics. Moreover, if Congress and state legislatures do
not act to protect the rights of workers to unionize and to regulate
the unchecked march toward automation, companies like Amazon will
ultimately automate away human employees, turning these industries into
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
jobless industrial landscapes.
According to filings with the Department of Labor (DOL), in a
single year Amazon spent $4.3 million on consultants to prevent its
employees from unionizing. \15\ Amazon's entire business model depends
on worker exploitation and fosters worker turnover. The company uses
anticompetitive business practices to increase its dominance and drive
down labor standards within its core industries. To do this, the
company relies on weak and outdated labor, occupational safety, and
antitrust law, underfunded and understaffed enforcement agencies, and
holes in regulatory jurisdiction. \16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/02/business/amazon-union-
christian-smalls.html.
\16\ https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/
ftc-sues-amazon-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power.
Last June, leaked documents showed that Amazon had a 150 percent
turnover rate. The documents warned, ``If we continue business as
usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the US network
by 2024.'' \17\ According to a report by the Strategic Organizing
Center (SOC), Amazon's punishing pace-of-work results in worker injury
rates that are nearly twice as high as that of all other non-Amazon
warehouse facilities. \18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/22/amazon-
workers-shortage-leaked-memo-warehouse.
\18\ https://thesoc.org/news/report-shows-amazon-workers-injured-
more-than-twice-industry-average/; https://thesoc.org/what-we-do/the-
injury-machine-how-amazons-production-system-hurts-workers/.
Amazon's Delivery Service Partner (DSP) program is a textbook
example of how Amazon utilizes weaknesses in labor, unfair competition,
and antitrust law to maintain its dominance, obstruct worker power, and
drive down labor standards. Amazon has set up more than 2,000 nominally
independent DSPs in the U.S. to deliver its packages, employing an
estimated 115,000 drivers. Amazon dictates the order of deliveries, the
route, the progress, and speed of each delivery. DSP employees and
their trucks or vans are branded with the Amazon logo. Amazon monitors
DSP drivers though an app called Mentor that is installed on navigation
devices that DSP drivers must use. Amazon dictates prices for each
delivery and limits the size of DSPs by capping the number of routes it
assigns to each. Amazon terminates DSPs who attempt to reduce their
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
drivers' grueling workload or increase their pay.
DSPs and their workers cannot fight back. When they do, Amazon can
simply terminate their contracts and shift the work to other DSPs.
Keeping each DSP thinly capitalized and under tight control allows
Amazon to prevent DSPs from challenging Amazon's power over them. For
example, Amazon has used several adaptations of its DSP contract to
impose an exclusive dealings arrangement on DSPs. One of the most
recent versions required DSPs to accept delivery request ``Monday
through Sunday, 365 days a year, at times and days designated by
Amazon.'' By preventing DSPs from working with competitors and growing
their ``so-called'' independent operations, Amazon ensures it remains
the only source of income for DSPs, and that they never build the power
necessary to confront Amazon on their own. \19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/22/tech/amazon-dsp-portland/
index.html; https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdbnw/i-had-nothing-to-my-
name-amazon-delivery-companies-are-being-crushed-by-debt.
Despite this extensive control and branding by Amazon, Amazon
asserts that DSPs are independent businesses and disclaims corporate
responsibility for the DSPs and employment responsibility for DSP
drivers. Yet, in numerous instances, Federal wage and hour lawsuits
filed by drivers against DSPs name Amazon as a co-defendant. In fact,
Amazon has settled multiple cases in which it was a named defendant,
accepting no liability under the terms of the settlement agreements.
Thus, the company has avoided lengthy litigation that could ultimately
determine Amazon to be a joint employer. By avoiding this
classification, it enjoys all the control associated with having its
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
own in-house fleet without concern for unionization efforts.
With its dominance, Amazon uses the DSP arrangement to eradicate
labor market competition by dictating standards to its supposed
competitors, while also making them rely on Amazon for their business.
Amazon is also replicating the DSP model in the tractor-trailer middle-
mile segment with its Amazon Freight Partners. Amazon's freight
operations serve both inter-facility movement of Amazon products and
third-party shippers. These small trucking operations are often poorly
vetted, and a recent Wall Street Journal investigation showed that
Amazon routinely hired companies with poor safety track records. \20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ Christopher Weaver, ``Amazon Routinely Hired Dangerous
Trucking Companies, With Deadly Consequences,'' Wall Street Journal,
Sept. 22, 2022.; https://thesoc.org/what-we-do/the-worst-mile-
production-pressure-and-the-injury-crisis-in-amazons-delivery-system/.
Unjust barriers to union representation and collective bargaining
rights permeate Federal labor law. For decades, FedEx has exploited
what is sometimes referred to as the ``express carrier loophole,''
placing tens of thousands of unequivocally non-airline employees,
including truck drivers and package handlers, under the Railway Labor
Act (RLA), instead of the NLRA. \21\ Because the RLA requires an ``all
or nothing'' approach to craft bargaining, this means that upwards of
100,000 employees would have to be organized simultaneously into a
single unit, as opposed to the NLRA, which allows location by location
organizing, as would be found at any FedEx competitor. This special
carveout status, which FedEx has spent millions of dollars lobbying to
preserve, is not rooted in well-reasoned labor law, but in a desire to
obstruct worker organizing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ https://www.politico.com/story/2010/06/ups-fedex-worlds-
apart-on-labor-law-039079.
There is a misconception that unions stifle economic growth and
entrepreneurship. There is a fear in these halls about speaking ill of
anyone deemed a ``job creator.'' When our elected leaders fail to
outlaw abusive business models, they're not protecting
entrepreneurship--they're enabling corporate greed and encouraging the
ultimate creation of a workplace where human beings are no longer
relevant. That's why the Teamsters have been publicly critical of
California Gov. Gavin Newsom for recently vetoing legislation that
would have mandated human operators inside heavy autonomous vehicles.
\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ https://teamster.org/2023/09/teamsters-labor-allies-demand-
gov-newsom-sign-ab-316/.
American workers want unions. They have a right to join or form a
union. But as we witness every day, employers will try everything they
can to deny that right to working people. When corporate executives
have friends on Capitol Hill who help them get away with it, the
potential for workers to get ahead in this country further disappears.
If we want to make America a better country, we have to stop letting
corporations destroy the middle class through their abuse and
exploitation of workers. We have to advocate for workers. We have to
really fight for them. And it can't just be the Teamsters doing the
heavy lifting. We need your help. We need our elected officials to do
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
more, and to do what's right.
We have got to put more money into workers' pockets. That's what
the Teamsters just did at UPS. It's what unions are doing all over the
country. And American workers are paying attention.
There is much that Congress can do right now to support worker
power and union growth as the antidote to corporate greed. Here are a
few of the Teamsters Union's Federal priorities:
Stand with Workers Fighting for Their Fair Share of Corporate
Wealth: Yes, quite literally stand with them on the picket line, but
also figuratively through your public statements. In July, 173
bipartisan Members in the House and 29 Senators, many on this
Committee, signed a letter stating support for UPS Teamsters' statutory
and constitutional rights to withhold their labor and initiate and
participate in a strike. While we deeply appreciate that support, that
letter should not have been as newsworthy and notable as it was.
Members of Congress must be actively and publicly engaged in
confronting corporate greed in your home states and districts.
End Exploitative Fissured Business Models that Encourage a
Competitive Race to the Bottom on Labor Standards: Specifically,
enforce joint employment laws and strengthen antitrust laws to end
practices like Amazon's DSP program. Amazon is avoiding liability for
and responsibility to its employees under its program, while still
retaining control over nearly every aspect of their work. Amazon's DSP
program is a textbook example of how the corporate giant utilizes
weaknesses in both labor and antitrust law to maintain its dominance,
obstruct worker power, and drive down labor standards. By preventing
DSPs from working with competitors and growing their ``so-called''
independent operations, Amazon ensures it remains the only source of
income for DSPs, and that these workers never build the power necessary
to confront Amazon on their own. \23\ The Teamsters Union strongly
supports the recent NLRA joint employer rule and opposes all efforts to
weaken or overturn that rule.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\23\ https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/22/tech/amazon-dsp-portland/
index.html; https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdbnw/i-had-nothing-to-my-
name-amazon-delivery-companies-are-being-crushed-by-debt.
Rein in Excessive Executive Compensation and Tax Corporations
Fairly: From 1978 to 2022, top CEO compensation shot up 1,209.2 percent
compared with a 15.3 percent increase in a typical worker's
compensation. In 2022, CEOs were paid 344 times as much as a typical
worker, in contrast to 1965 when they were paid 21 times as much as a
typical worker. \24\ The Federal tax code is rife with inequity and
loopholes that favor corporations and the ultra-wealthy. For example,
an existing tax loophole allows corporations to deduct from their
taxable income any amount paid to CEOs and their executives, as long as
the pay is ``performance based.'' This means that the more they pay
their executives, the less they pay in Federal taxes. Closing the CEO
pay loophole would save taxpayers $50 billion over 10 years, according
to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation. We should pass
legislation like S. 3155/H.R. 324 The Stop Subsidizing Multimillion
Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\24\ https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2022/#full-report.
Address Inequity in Corporate Bankruptcy Statute: Corporations and
Wall Street have a long history of using bankruptcy to deprive
employees and retirees of their hard-fought earnings and retirement
benefits. In corporate bankruptcies, worker claims for compensation and
benefits are often denied while executives' claims are given
preferential treatment. We need to reform corporate bankruptcy laws
that favor the wealthy and well connected over working people. The
Teamsters Union urges Congress to pass the Prioritizing Employees and
Retirees in Bankruptcy Act, or similar legislation that dramatically
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improves recoveries for active employees and retirees.
Deny Federal Contracts to Union Busting Companies: Full Stop.
Pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The PRO Act
would address weaknesses and close loopholes in Federal labor law that
make it easier for corporations to obstruct worker power. The bill
would impose meaningful penalties on employers who violate the NLRA;
ban captive audience meetings; expedite first contract negotiations;
and protect the right to strike.
Fully Fund the NLRB and OSHA. The recent surge in collective worker
action means more work for the NLRB and OSHA. Both agencies have been
starved for resources for too long. We can pass model legislation, but
it means little without meaningful enforcement. To further combat
Amazon's exploitative business model, we should pass legislation at the
Federal level like the state level Warehouse Worker Protection Act.
This bill addresses grueling and arbitrary productivity quotas which
directly contribute to worker injury and turnover in Amazon warehouses.
\25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\ https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/03/new-york-passes-bill-
targeting-amazon-warehouse-productivity-quotas.html.
Modernize Antitrust Laws and Address the Impact of Excessive
Concentration and Anti-competitive Action on Labor Markets: The
Teamsters will continue to support robust antitrust enforcement and
reform. Our agenda is defined by three objectives: (1) curtailing
concentrations of corporate power that harm workers; (2) attacking
unfair and abusive business models and practices that threaten workers;
and (3) empowering working people to engage in collective action
against corporate criminals who seek to deny their fundamental right to
organize. Congress can take a first step in advancing this agenda by
passing Senator Klobuchar and Grassley's American Innovation and Choice
Online Act. This legislation is the tip of the spear of a broader pro-
worker antitrust agenda and would stop predatory Big Tech platforms
like Amazon from placing their own products and services at an unfair
advantage over high-road employers in the warehousing and logistics
sector. In addition to supporting greater oversight of the labor market
impacts of companies like Amazon, we support enforcement and regulation
efforts to treat pernicious practices such as use of vertical
restraints and misclassification schemes as unfair methods of
competition. The labor dispute exemption to antitrust law must also be
respected, and if necessary, Congress should clarify for the courts
what our labor and antitrust laws already state clearly: worker
organizing efforts to improve labor conditions are exempt from
antitrust scrutiny, in acknowledgement of workers' fundamental right to
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
organize.
End Special Tax Treatment for Union Busting Activity: The No Tax
Breaks for Union Busting Act would end the taxpayer subsidization of
anti-union activity by corporations. The bill would classify business'
interference in worker organization campaigns as political speech under
the tax code and therefore not tax deductible.
Enforce the DOL Rule on ESG Investment: Ensure that union workers
can put their own pension money to work in their best interest.
Close the Express Carrier Loophole: Pass the Package Delivery
Parity Act and ensure that tens of thousands of misclassified non-
airline workers are appropriately covered by the NLRA.
______
[summary statement of sean m. o'brien]
In August, rank-and-file members voted by an overwhelming 86.3
percent to ratify the most lucrative contract in the history of the
Teamsters at UPS. The agreement passed by the highest vote ever for a
Teamsters contract at UPS. There is no larger union contract with a
single employer than the UPS Teamsters National Master Agreement. This
five-year contract protects and rewards more than 340,000 UPS Teamsters
in the United States and Puerto Rico, raising wages for full-and part-
time workers, creating more full-time jobs, and securing important
workplace protections, including--for the first time--air conditioning
in new package cars and heat shields and ventilation ducts in existing
vehicles, which will protect the safety and health of our members.
The extreme consolidation of wealth and power in this country is a
crisis that deserves Congress' immediate and full attention, but
working Americans are not waiting to be saved by their elected
officials. Workers are taking action to improve their standard of
living, stay safe, and have a voice at work by organizing and building
worker power.
A recent analysis of the effects of union membership on wealth
shows that being part of a union is associated with greater wealth for
working-class families and especially working-class families of color.
\1\ Because of this effect, unions are a crucial means for building
wealth among the working class and reducing racial wealth gaps for
workers without 4-year college degrees. An August 2023 report from the
U.S. Department of the Treasury found that the positive effects of
unions are not limited to union workers. The report concluded that
nonunionized firms in competition with unionized workplaces may choose
to raise wages, change hiring practices, or improve their workplace
environment to attract workers. . . . The empirical evidence finds that
these positive spillovers exist. Each 1 percentage point increase in
private-sector union membership rates translates to about a 0.3 percent
increase in nonunion wages.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2022/6/
jec-ed-and-labor-release-new-report-on-economic-benefits-of-unions.
For much of the 20th century there was a shared understanding of
the role unions needed to play, not just in improving the circumstances
of workers but in providing a counterbalance to powerful business
interests. The corporate world understands that strong unions can put a
check on the kinds of greed, exploitation, and unilateral decision-
making that exist in nonunion companies. \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bernie-sanders-
angry-about-capitalism/.
It's simple. As a country, we can choose to collectively encourage
the growth of good union jobs that pay family sustaining wages and
allow those good jobs to set the standard for competition within an
industry or we can continue to allow companies like Amazon to dominate
and drive a race to the bottom for working people.
______
The Chair. Thank you very much. Our next witness is Sara
Nelson, the International President of the Association of
Flight Attendants-Communication Workers of America.
Ms. Nelson started as a Flight Attendant at United Airlines
in 1996. She has been serving as the International President of
CWA since 2014. Ms. Nelson, thank you very much for being with
us.
STATEMENT OF SARA NELSON, INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT,
ASSOCIATION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS-COMMUNICATION
WORKERS OF AMERICA, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Nelson. Thank you, Chairman Sanders, Dr. Cassidy, and
Members of the full Committee for the opportunity to testify
here today, and especially to get some time with my union
brothers, Shawn and Sean.
I am a 27 year union flight attendant and President of the
Association of Flight Attendants, CWA, representing flight
attendants at 20 airlines alongside our sister union, the
Association of Professional Flight Attendants.
We represent 80,000 flight attendants in total. We work
closely with our partner union, CWA, and the millions of
transportation workers and union members who are the backbone
of our economy. Amy King, Michael Tarrou, Amy Jarrett, Robert
Fangman, Kathryn LaBorie, Al Marchand, Alicia Titus, Victor
Saracini, Michael Horrocks, Hazel Sanchez, Maryanne MacFarlane,
this was the crew of United Airlines Flight 175.
This flight is the one you can picture crashing into the
south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001,
because all cameras were trained on the site after American
Flight 11 hit the North Tower 17 minutes earlier. But this
wasn't just any flight attendant crew.
These were my friends, my flying partners, and members of
my union. In the 50 years before I was hired, my union fought
through massive discrimination to make our jobs one that anyone
with the heart of a flight attendant could do, and built up the
career with a living wage, comprehensive health care, including
specific needs for women, a pension, and safety in the cabin
for our passengers too.
But everything changed the moment my friends died. While we
grieved and fought like hell to support half of our Boston base
who lost their jobs nearly overnight, crisis capitalists were
already plotting to break our union contracts and redefine the
value of our jobs. We lost over 100,000 aviation jobs
practically overnight.
Bankruptcies cut our pay, our staffing shifted the cost of
health care to us. And when $80 million would have saved our
flight attendant pension plan, the court approved termination
instead, while at the same time awarding $400 million to the
top executives.
There was no Government bailout, but aviation workers were
forced to give $81 billion in concessions to save the airlines,
much like the auto workers were forced to give massive
concessions to save Ford, Chrysler, and GM.
The airline industry was heavily union, but after Ronald
Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981 and even sent
several to jail for the strike, corporate America knew it was
open season on unions. I soon learned personally and painfully
the reality that an injury to one is an injury to all.
As union density declined to just 6 percent of the private
sector workforce, our capitalist economy has unraveled the
American dream, and we are fighting to get it back. In 2020,
aviation unions were set to negotiate real improvements for the
first time since 911, and we needed them to.
The cuts we endured turned a generation of workers away
from careers in aviation. But when the pandemic hit, we were
not about to go backward again. We fought for and won the
historic workers first relief program, the payroll support
program.
Even though we put constraints on executives with no stock
buybacks and caps on executive compensation, well after the
relief period, our plan saved our jobs, or airlines, and with
the help of nearly every Senator on this Committee. And
aviation was the only industry to not grow in inequality during
the pandemic.
We have also successfully stopped the airlines from
announcing new stock buyback plans since the prohibition ended
last year. They must fix the operation for the American public
and the workers and negotiate union contracts before sending
cash to Wall Street.
There was one airline with the lowest union density that
fought only during that time to keep out of the law the
requirement that they could not spend any Federal dollars on
union busting.
Delta Airlines spent their time doing that and then took
the taxpayers money and cut hours for workers as they were not
supposed to do because there were no unions there to hold them
accountable like we were at the other airlines.
We have tiers in the airline industry to the regional
airlines that do work for the major airlines. United, American,
Delta, and Alaska are paid 45 percent less on average, working
the same flights, doing 40 percent of the domestic lift in this
country.
We have to end those tiers. And we have an organizing
campaign at the largest regional carrier right now, SkyWest
Airlines. SkyWest has for a very long time tried to keep the
wool over workers' eyes by saying that they already have a
union, but it is an illegal company union.
When Teresa Grange, nearly 25 year employee, was at SkyWest
and honored, and Shane Price, 9 year employee, stood up and
showed that this company union was a sham and that their voting
system was a sham, they were fired for their union organizing.
This Committee needs to have oversight over that and put a
check on it.
The laws we have today were eroded since they were first
enacted and took shape. The oldest law, labor law, the Railway
Labor Act, has been eroded. There has been no reduction in the
right to strike and we routinely got contracts when the right
to strike was enacted.
There was a clear question before the companies and the
union members in order to reach agreements rather than to go on
strike. But the Administration has not allowed that release
for--in two decades, with the exception of one time.
That is why we are suffering now. Today, in contract
bargaining, where American Airlines has not had a raise since
2019, the flight attendants are asking for a 33 percent wage
increase because to keep up with inflation, they need at least
22 percent.
If we are going to get ahead from where we were since 9-11,
we have to have more than that. We need scheduling rules, and
we need our time back. Our time is controlled by these
companies, and it is--and the consumers are hurt by that, too.
We are looking for scheduling rules and investments in the
airlines so that we are not left out stranded. These are the
things that we are negotiating for right now. American flight
attendants voted 99.5 percent for a strike, and we will be
asking for a release soon.
United Airlines and Alaska Airlines is not far behind them.
I have a question for this Committee and a message for the
billionaires who want to bleed the working class dry to the
billionaires. I say there is plenty for everyone.
You can be fabulously wealthy, but if you continue to try
to keep us poor, you will find that the working people are not
going to take it anymore. To the Members of this Committee, to
the elected leaders across the country and around the world, I
ask you the question that working people have asked for
generations, which side are you on?
Thank you to Chairman Sanders and Dr. Cassidy for the
opportunity to testify. Unions are necessary for a stable
economy, our safety, our security, and our democracy. Nothing
is more important for our Nation to succeed than unions,
collective bargaining dialog between divergent groups,
solutions to the existential threats that we face, and the
strength and future of our world and nation.
The Association of Flight Attendants, CWA is prepared to do
our part, and I look forward to doing that with you and your
questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Nelson follows:]
prepared statement of sara nelson
Introduction
Thank you Chairman Sanders, Dr. Cassidy and Members of the full
Committee, for convening this hearing to examine how unions are
improving the lives of working families.
My name is Sara Nelson. I am a twenty-seven year union flight
attendant and president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA,
AFL-CIO (AFA), representing flight attendants at 20 airlines across the
industry along with our sister union the Association of Professional
Flight Attendants, 80,000 flight attendants in total. We also
coordinate closely with our partner union the Communications Workers of
America, and all of the transportation union affiliates of the
Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO.
No Matter the Industry, the Worker Plight is the Same
It's an honor to testify beside my friends President O'Brien and
President Fain, who both ran member-driven contract campaigns in recent
months that are doing more to restore the American Dream than anything
we've seen in decades. Flight Attendants and workers in every industry
can relate to the demands of UPS and autoworkers, just as workers in
every industry.
Workers are forced to fight battles that labor won decades earlier:
over workplace safety, an 8-hour day, vacation, sick leave, a living
wage, health care and retirement security. For too long, politicians
and courts have sided with corporations over labor, fundamentally and
perniciously reshaping American law, life and liberty. As union density
declined to just 6 percent of the private sector workforce, our
capitalist economy has unraveled the American dream. The social
contract that has been in place since the 1940's, offering the working
class a good life, the means to enjoy life in off hours, and a secure
retirement if only one member of the family spent 40 hours on the job.
There are no red, blue, purple, green, or any other color states.
Every state is a working class state. If we want a free society where
everyone can thrive we need the kind of working class moral clarity
with clear demands that came from the picket lines at UPS, the Big
Three automakers, the writers, actors, healthcare workers, educators,
hotel workers, grad students, grocery workers, mineworkers,
farmworkers, confectionery workers, scientists, engineers, machinists,
truck drivers, rail workers, tech workers, and aviation workers
including Flight Attendants. America needs to support the rights of
workers and the people do. More than ever before in our history the
public understands this and finds common cause in fighting corporate
greed and demanding shared prosperity and shared productivity as
technology advances.
More than a century ago, in 1914, the great labor leader Mother
Jones traveled to Ludlow, Colorado, where mineworkers had gone on
strike when the company refused demands we take for granted today, like
an 8-hour work day, enforcement of labor law and fair compensation.
The workers at the Ludlow mine were mostly immigrants, representing
more than 30 nationalities, ethnicities and cultures. \1\ There were 24
different languages spoken by the miners. In many cases, poverty and
the cycle of exploitation in company towns forced young children into
the mines. Coal barons ignored the state's safety laws, and the mines
in Colorado were the most dangerous in the nation, \2\ with more than
twice as many deaths per capita as the national average. These workers
had their backs against the wall, and when the bosses refused their
demands, the workers walked off.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ https://history.denverlibrary.org/news/diversity-then-now-
ludlow-massacre-and-western-history.
\2\ https://books.google.com/books'id=vaWiBwAAQBAJ.
Before Mother Jones arrived, the private militia hired by the
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and the National Guard had opened fire
on one of the camps. Reports vary, but at least 26 people were killed
in the camps--including four women and 11 children who were suffocated
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
by fires.
After that horrible massacre, Mother Jones gathered the miners
together, and she said to them, ``Sure you lost, because they had
bayonets and all you had was the Constitution. Any battle between the
Constitution and bayonets, the bayonets will win every time. But you
must fight. You must fight and lose, you must fight and win, but above
all, you must fight!'' \3\ The Ludlow Massacre and the Colorado
Coalfield War that followed were a turning point in American history.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ https://labortribune.com/mine-workers-roberts-brings-mother-
jones-back-to-the-fight/
In Washington, Congress convened a United States Commission on
Industrial Relations (CIR) and conducted hearings. That commission's
report helped pave the way for Congress to enshrine the 8-hour workday,
a ban on child labor, and eventually the Wagner Act and the National
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Labor Relations Act.
For decades, working people fought. We didn't win every fight, but
we were winning. We won pay and benefits that afforded us time to live
our lives and retire with dignity. Starting in the workplace, we built
political power and helped open the road for Civil Rights, for LGBTQ+
rights, for environmental protections and so much more. America's
greatest days of shared prosperity and social progress were built on
the foundations laid by generations of workers who fought for their
rights at work, and all of our rights in our Nation. And for decades,
workers were winning.
But Mother Jones also warned us ``The capitalists say there is no
need of labor organizing but the fact that they themselves are
continually organizing shows their real beliefs.''
The tables fully turned when Ronald Reagan broke the PATCO strike
and working people went into defense mode. Over the next 20 years,
presidents and Congress gutted regulations that had protected workers
and our Country from the rapacious greed of a few. They deregulated the
telecom industry, the trucking industry, and yes the airline industry.
They opened ``free trade'' that gave corporations the freedom to ship
jobs overseas and abandon American workers.
For nearly all of my adult life, the billionaires were increasing
and amassing all the wealth--as a game of who can be the richest not
who can contribute the most to society. They slowly chipped away at our
union contracts, convincing workers that we had to give back pay,
benefits and working conditions just to keep our jobs. They created
two-tier wage systems and shell games of sub-contractors. And they
assaulted our democracy, flooding elections with corporate money and
gutting the institutions and laws that made it possible for everyday
Americans to thrive.
All of that happened because we failed to recognize the value of
collective bargaining and the necessity of unions in our democracy and
capitalist economy. After the violence workers suffered by company
thugs while fighting to build up a society of shared prosperity,
``labor peace'' appeared to be a preferable course. But that led to
corruption and compromise that often left workers unable to tell the
difference between the corporate c-suite and the union leadership.
Capitalism does not consider the people; it only pushes for higher
profits at any cost. The only check for the people is unions and today
the public understands this better than ever. We are starved for
leadership that speaks with clarity for the working person, which today
includes every gender, race, culture, and creed.
In Ludlow in 1914, as Rockefeller's militia fired machine guns from
fortified positions at the cloth tents where miners and their families
were trying to shelter, the conductor of a passing freight train
stopped the cars to block the bullets. \4\ He gave the miners and their
families a chance to flee to safety.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ https://libcom.org/article/ludlow-massacre-1914-sam-lowry.
That spirit of solidarity lives on in the union leaders beside me.
For decades, Teamsters have negotiated their contracts with ``no scab''
clauses so their members can refuse to drive delivery trucks across a
picket line. Decades after Ludlow, it was the United Mineworkers who
provided vital funding to help the UAW win its first campaigns, \5\ and
the contracts UAW negotiated over the years set the standard for all of
labor. Today, everyone is a worker. As the president of the Flight
Attendant union I am keenly aware of the gender pay gap associated with
jobs designated as ``women's work,'' ``migrant work,'' or jobs often
filled by workers of color. Solidarity, safety, and security, demands
we value all work and command dignity for the contributions of every
worker.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ https://afsc.org/news/legacy-united-mine-workers-america.
Our Country and our world face enormous dangers. But I have hope.
For generations, workplace solidarity united workers across barriers of
culture, language, belief and national origin. And in my lifetime, I
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
have never seen the pull to solidarity more strongly than I do today.
September 11 Taught Me the Dangers of Crisis Capitalism, and the Value
of Unions
Amy King
Michael Tarrou
Amy Jarret
Robert Fangman
Kathryn LaBorie
Al Marchand
Alicia Titus
This was the crew of United Airlines flight 175. You know this
flight. It's the one you can picture crashing into the South Tower of
the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, because all cameras were
trained on the site after American flight 11 hit the North Tower 17
minutes earlier. But this wasn't just any Flight Attendant crew--these
were my friends, my flying partners, and members of my union. They were
with pilot union members Captain Victor Saracini and First Officer
Michael Horrocks. And the whole crew was so happy to have with them two
Boston gate agents we adored. Marianne MacFarlane and Jesus Sanchez
were using their flight benefits to take a well-deserved vacation,
defined for them in their union contract.
I had been a Boston based union Flight Attendant for 5 years. I
used to joke affectionately that ``all gates lead to Jesus'' as he
would see us off and welcome us home again. I had worked flight 175
many times before, often with one of the two Amys; jokester and singer
Michael; and Kathryn barely able to peek over the coordinator desk
while on her tippy toes to reach the lead flight attendant paperwork.
We had shared beers and ``Fenway franks'' at Red Sox games, day cruised
on our annual union trip to Provincetown, dressed up and danced at our
union holiday party, and celebrated Patriot's Day by gathering at Amy
King's on Beacon Street to cheer on the Boston marathon runners. We had
fought together through our union to get the airline to move us from a
Los Angeles downtown layover hotel where there had been a rape, we
protested and took a strike vote against a proposed merger with another
airline and picketed as a part of a union campaign to get positions on
the Boston-London flight we all wanted to work. We had just won Federal
certification for our work as Flight Attendants, a ban on spraying
poisonous pesticides in our aircraft cabin, EPA oversight of our
onboard water, FDA inspection of our airplane food, as well as fines
and Federal prison time for passengers who became violent or interfered
with our work to keep everyone safe in the aircraft cabin.
Five years earlier when I became a Flight Attendant I only
considered it because my union had won an epic battle against the
tobacco industry to ban smoking from our planes. My college friend
called me from a sunny layover at Miami beach to describe the real
benefits of the job--pay higher than what would have been my first year
as a teacher, free and expansive healthcare with coverage that mattered
to women, flexibility with my schedule, and a pension that I could take
as early as age 50. She didn't say it was the product of decades of
fighting discrimination and building up a strong union contract, but
that contract and the legal and legislative battles my union had won
were what made me drive to Chicago the following day to interview to
become a Flight Attendant.
I didn't know anything about unions when I got the job at United
Airlines. After 6 weeks of training and 3 weeks working flights I
couldn't wait to get that first paycheck. When it didn't come, I tried
to get help from someone in the airport office, but the answer was,
``we're sure you'll get it next time.'' Two and a half weeks later, on
a diet of top ramen and plane food, rent was due and luckily so was the
next payday. When the paycheck didn't hit my bank account again I was
desperate for help, but the answers from the office were the same. I
felt the tense anger in my chest and the hot tears welling up in my
eyes. No one seemed to hear me or care. Then everything changed with a
gentle hand on my shoulder. I turned around to see another Flight
Attendant I didn't know. She asked me how to spell my name, handed me a
personal check, and told me, ``first, you take care of yourself, and
second, call our union!'' I did call our union and I had my paycheck
the next day, but that was also the hook for my involvement. That's how
I knew Robert, Al, and Alicia, who had all only been flying for 8
months before getting the last-minute call to work flight 175 on 9/11.
I signed up to do the new hire union training to make sure new flight
attendants knew their rights on the job and who had their backs if
something went wrong.
Robert loved the career my union had built and told me he felt
accepted and able to be who he truly was as a gay man for the first in
his life, with benefits for his family no matter who he loved. Al took
the job after more than two decades on the police force in New Mexico
and was last seen by his wife Rebecca skipping down the terminal to
work flight 175 after spending a romantic weekend with her on Cape Cod.
The joy he felt for his second career was only possible because our
union obliterated age and sex discrimination. Alicia was drawn to the
job as an ambassador of peace, quickly beloved by the Flight Attendants
throughout the base and fulfilled in the work of bringing people
together, de-escalating conflict, and promoting what is also the
strength of the union--solidarity among every gender, race, culture,
generation, and creed.
In the crisis room at the Logan Airport Hilton our union set up
tracking of every stranded crew and worked to get them home, while
providing grief counseling and wellness checks that saved lives from
suicide. We won several extensions of unemployment benefits for the
thousands who were furloughed and expanded assistance for mental health
challenges. Our union fought for Federal security screening to stop
airlines from relegating our security to the lowest bidder and forcing
government agencies, airlines, and workers to ensure coordinated,
redundant, and risk-based security was put in place. We fought for
proper security training and tools on our planes, 100 percent screening
of cargo, no knives allowed on our planes, and reinforced flight deck
doors with secondary barriers. We planned memorial services and
disaster relief for our friends' families. But while our union grieved,
comforted, and reinforced our personal and national security, crisis
capitalists were planning to redefine the value of our union jobs.
We lost over 100,000 aviation jobs practically overnight.
Bankruptcies cut our pay, our staffing, shifted the cost of healthcare
to us, and when $80 million would have saved our Flight Attendant
pension plan the court approved termination instead while at the same
time awarding $400 million to the top executives. There was no
government bailout--but aviation workers were forced to give $81
billion in concessions to ``save'' the airlines, much like auto workers
were forced to give massive concessions to save Ford, Chrysler, and GM.
The airline industry was heavily union, but after Ronald Reagan fired
the air traffic controllers in 1981 and even sent several to jail for
the strike Corporate America knew it was open season on unions. The old
union adage of ``an injury to one is an injury to all'' was replaced
with a corporate narrative that you should feel lucky to have a job and
solidarity was a song for suckers. The strike was made a dirty word and
both unions and collective bargaining were under attack. Since union
density has fallen to just 6 percent of the private sector, wages for
the American worker have remained flat, while productivity has gone
through the roof and straight to Wall Street.
Our experience in aviation is no different than for workers across
the economy.
Unions are Winning a Better Life for all Workers
Even at the height of the union movement in the late 1960's and
early 1970's, only one third of Americans were members of a union. But
when enough workers are unionized, or when our wins are big enough, we
set the standard for entire industries.
Within days of the UAW's tentative agreements with Ford, General
Motors and Stellantis Group (the Big 3), Toyota announced that it will
raise wages for workers in its US plants. Just last week, Honda
announced raises across the board for US workers as well. Within an
industry, if non-union firms want to attract and retain qualified
workers, they must compete with the unionized workers' pay, benefits
and working conditions. The more of us who are unionized, the more
pressure all employers face.
Unions invest in workers' fights, even when we don't directly stand
to gain. Just as coal miners invested in auto workers decades ago, in
recent years teachers, nurses and public employees represented by the
American Federation of Teachers gave hundreds of thousands of dollars
to help Amazon workers organize and bargain. It was unions that put
boots on the ground and resources into the campaigns that have raised
the minimum wage across cities and states for tens of millions of
workers.
I always tell people that a woman must join and run unions. That's
because in our unions, we are equal. Whatever your gender, race,
identity or religion, we all earn the same pay for the same job. We
have a contract and representation to protect us from harassment and
discrimination. Before any law protecting LGTBQ Americans in the
workplace or extended same-sex partner benefits, union contracts did.
Unions keep corporate greed in check, in ways that benefit workers
and consumers alike. A new study \6\ from the Rady School of Management
at the University of California San Diego found that stronger unions
create a more stable economy. Companies where workers have a strong
union make fewer risky bets and are less likely to take on dangerous
debt, making them more resilient in downturns and reducing the risk of
layoffs or full-scale collapses.
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\6\ https://today.ucsd.edu/story/unions-push-companies-to-reduce-
risky-debt-help-safeguard-us-workers.
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Workers First--No More Bogus Trickle Down ``Relief''
I had seen and felt the harm of crisis and bankruptcy before. When
COVID hit our union was not about to sit back and allow it to destroy
lives again.
During the pandemic, my union--alongside our Teamster siblings and
the other aviation unions--fought for and won the historic workers'
first relief program, the Payroll Support Program (PSP) originally part
of the CARES Act. I would like to especially acknowledge Chairman
Sanders' role in helping pass this legislation, along with many other
Members of this Committee, including Dr. Cassidy who worked to extend
the program that saved our jobs and our industry.
Our Payroll Protection Program saved American aviation. The Federal
Government provided grants to keep aviation workers on payroll during
the greatest downturn our industry has ever seen.
PSP was designed with a single purpose: to keep aviation workers--
passenger service agents, flight attendants, mechanics, caterers,
pilots, dispatchers and all of the 2.1 million workers who make
aviation possible--paid, connected to healthcare, out of the
unemployment lines, and ready to lift the entire country.
This program used efficient systems already in place through
airline payrolls, keeping benefits and payroll taxes in place, and
maintaining the basis for retirement security both through government
programs and company benefits. We continued paying taxes that supported
the jobs we all count on through state and local budgets, like
sanitation, firefighters, mass transit, education, and emergency
response. At a time of great uncertainty for the industry, aviation
workers had the stability to continue spending into the economy and the
confidence that they and their family members would have access to
healthcare in the middle of the pandemic. Fundamentally, PSP allowed us
to take care of ourselves so that our Country could focus on those who
were sick or vulnerable, while also continuing to support the safety
net programs we need well after this pandemic is over. It is well
documented that the public received an outsized return on all its
investments to help aviation recover from COVID. And, to keep the
crisis capitalists from using bankruptcies and scarcity to further
erode our jobs.
The program was also a model for how Congress can condition its
spending to ensure accountability. PSP funding is authorized
exclusively to maintain the salaries, wages, and benefits of aviation
workers. Corporate restrictions during the relief period and for years
after included, no dividends, no stock buybacks, and unprecedented caps
on executive compensation. It conditioned the carriers' receipt of
Federal funds on making no involuntary furloughs or layoffs.
Participating carriers also were required to maintain levels of
scheduled service, critical to maintaining air travel to smaller
communities. In the pandemic this was especially important to ensure
well-functioning health care and pharmaceutical supply chains to serve
small and remote communities across the country.
PSP was an overwhelming success, responsible for saving hundreds of
thousands of jobs across our industry, and maintaining critical
spending in our communities, where every aviation job supports 3.55
additional jobs, or 1 in 14 jobs in the country.
Through PSP, our unions saved American aviation, and likely the
economy. The airline executives could never have done this alone, and
certainly didn't suggest the constraints on executive pay or stock
buybacks that resulted in aviation being the only industry not to grow
in inequality over the course of the pandemic. In the years leading up
to the pandemic, the airlines had sunk their profits into Wall Street
greed, issuing billions in stock buybacks to juice shareholder value
(and enrich executives) rather than saving for a rainy day or investing
in the airlines for consumers and workers alike.
Without PSP, we would have seen hundreds of thousands of aviation
workers furloughed. Many would have left the industry altogether. Just
as we suffered for 20 years after 9/11, mothers and fathers would have
told their children to stay away from aviation jobs. Aviation workers
are required to undergo strict training, certification and background
checks, including regular safety training required to stay current. If
our industry had seen mass furloughs and departures, the process of
rehiring, recertifying and retraining our entire industry would have
put a years-long choke point on our economy. You may remember the chaos
of the summer and fall of 2022, when a combination of weather,
technology and staffing issues led to mass cancellations and delays. At
that point, airlines were at roughly ninety-five percent of their pre-
pandemic staffing. Imagine what the industry would have looked like if
instead of seven to 10 percent attrition we saw during the pandemic, we
had seen layoffs of thirty percent or more.
If you've taken a flight, received a package by airmail or enjoyed
fresh foods shipped by air in the last 3 years, you can thank an
aviation union for making sure that American aviation didn't collapse--
and for holding corporate greed in our industry in check in the
process.
The PSP is also an example of something else: when we work
together, we can achieve things that were thought impossible. On March
18, 2020, I walked into a room to pitch this plan to the CEOs of
America's biggest airlines. Because we have a long history, and because
of the unprecedented crisis, they were willing to hear me out.
Together, we walked into Congress to pitch our plan. I can't tell you
how many people told me it would never get done. Even members of my own
team--people who poured their hearts into the effort--did not believe
we could get something like this through Congress. But we did. Through
tireless advocacy and teamwork, we secured the initial aid, protected
it from efforts by then-Treasury Secretary Mnuchin to sabotage it, and
even renewed it twice. Along the way, we secured the support of
Democrats and Republicans. In fact, alongside champions in the
Democratic Senate caucus, one of the critical supporters was Senator
Roger Wicker.
It's also instructive to look at the one thing we proposed that was
left out of the program. The corporate boards understood that airlines
are deeply unpopular, and that any hope of receiving grants that would
keep the industry afloat would also require that they accept terms they
didn't like. They agreed to stop stock buybacks. They agreed to halt
dividend payments to shareholders. They agreed to cap executive
compensation and bonuses. But going in, we also said they would have to
agree to simply follow the law with neutrality in union organizing
while utilizing the government grants. That was Delta Air Lines' red
line. They were willing to give up their own bonuses and the gifts to
Wall Street. But they would rather take the risk that the entire
industry would collapse than agree to allow workers to organize without
interference. And I will remind you, this is in an industry that is
eighty percent unionized already.
That tells you something important. The deepest fear of the
ownership class isn't sharing a bit more of the wealth, although
they're not fond of that either. Their true fear is giving up control
over the working people whose labor creates all of the value in our
economy.
Despite the clear statutory language in the CARES Act requiring
carriers who receive payroll grants to maintain pay levels and
benefits, Delta Air Lines was the first out of the gate with cuts to
hours and worker take home pay. The carrier made the decision to cut
ground crew hours by as much as 40 percent without consulting with
workers. Delta Air Lines Flight Attendants asked their management to
commit to a minimum number of monthly hours equivalent to the amount
delineated in the Flight Attendant contract of Delta's closest industry
comparator, but Delta management refused to do so, making clear its
plans to slash Flight Attendant hours and benefits below established
industry minimum standards as well. Delta pushed three to four times as
many flight attendants into early retirement and moved flight
attendants to the kitchens and other jobs that didn't pay as much as
the flight attendant jobs the program was intended to protect. Unions
kept airlines honest during the relief period, but where unions didn't
exist Delta didn't follow the rules or respect the contributions of
taxpayers. Unions are needed to help enforce our Country's laws and
investments.
No Stock Buybacks Before Contracts and Reliable Operations
The Payroll Support Program ban on airline company stock buybacks
ended on September 30, 2022. Six weeks before that ban lifted the
Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), the Air Line Pilots
Association, Int'l (ALPA), the Association of Professional Flight
Attendants (APFA), the Communications Workers of America (CWA),
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW),
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Transport Workers
Union of America (TWU), and Service Employees International Union
(SEIU), representing hundreds of thousands of aviation workers,
launched a public campaign demanding that airlines pledge to stabilize
the industry with reliable operations and good jobs before diverting
any airline profits to Wall Street through stock buybacks.
From 2014 through 2019, United, Southwest, American and Delta
rewarded Wall Street with more than $39 billion in combined stock
buybacks. That money that should have been invested in better passenger
experiences, staffing, and good jobs. Early in the pandemic, aviation
unions secured a historic relief package, the Payroll Support Program
(PSP), to keep workers in their jobs with pay and benefits. It also
barred airline executives from utilizing stock manipulation tricks
through September 30, 2022.
We explained, ``We paused the greed in aviation for a little while
with legislative constraints tied to COVID relief. But the greed that
ran rampant before COVID created a system that was already stretched
thin with minimum staffing and high overtime hours. We can't allow
executives to send one dime to Wall Street before they fix operational
issues and conclude contract negotiations that will ensure pay and
benefits keep and attract people to aviation jobs.''
In just the first half of 2022, U.S. airlines canceled more flights
than in all of 2021, disrupting travel for millions of passengers and
creating high-stress conditions for aviation workers. Unions are
calling for airlines to resolve the ongoing operational chaos by better
aligning staffing and scheduling to meet demand and concluding delayed
labor contract negotiations.
Thus far, our demand for no stock buybacks has worked. It matters
for workers and consumers alike. Anyone interested in supporting the
campaign can learn more and sign the petition at nostockbuybacks.org.
Start in the Workplace
I always tell people, ``start in the workplace, and the politics
will follow.'' When Mineworkers and Teamsters first organized, there
were no friendly laws to protect them. Today, union busters pull
workers into captive-audience meetings to issue thinly veiled threats
or buy us off with pizza. As our union organizing campaign grows
stronger at Delta Air Lines, the anti-union propaganda and heavy-handed
pizza parties have shifted to steak dinners. When the Teamsters were
founded in 1903, workers who tried to organize their workplaces were
met with batons and bullets.
The laws we have today--while eroded by Congress and the Court
since first enacted--took shape because workers fought. We held up the
mirror to America and forced Washington to see the untenable treatment
of everyday people by the coal barons and the steel barons and the
railroad barons. We marched and we fought and eventually Washington
responded. The National Labor Relations Act was a compromise--it gave
workers a legal framework to organize and bargain, because the
alternative was more violent clashes with the bosses' goons, angry
protests in the streets and a halt to energy and commerce across the
country.
But today, the labor laws of the Great Depression have been
weakened almost beyond recognition. The National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) and National Mediation Board (NMB) have been so defunded that
they simply cannot enforce the laws that remain effectively, and when
they can take up a case the consequences are irrelevant to today's
coffee barons and 2-day-shipping barons and starship barons.
That's why Amazon feels no fear when they blatantly interfere with
union elections in Bessemer, Alabama, or refuse to bargain in good
faith with warehouse workers in Staten Island. It's why Howard Schultz
closes down stores where workers have voted for a union, fires union
organizers and illegally offers raises and benefits to non-union stores
even with the national spotlight on his actions. It's why Elon Musk has
repeatedly broken labor laws from the Tesla assembly floor in Fremont,
California to the cubicles where workers are programming autopilot in
Buffalo, New York.
It's why Delta Air Lines makes no effort to hide its illegal union
busting against the Flight Attendants, Ramp agents and mechanics who
are fighting to organize their unions with the Association of Flight
Attendants-CWA, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and
the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
(IAM).
It's why the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
(AMPTP), United Parcel Service (UPS) and the Big 3 automakers didn't
bother negotiating in good faith until strike deadlines had passed, and
why corporate offices at Alaska, United and American Airlines aren't
worried about dragging out contract negotiations for months or years
beyond contract expiration.
Without the support of strong legal consequences, the only way to
make corporations accountable is through worker action. And that is
what we are seeing today.
The oldest labor law, the Railway Labor Act, was changed in 2012 to
require a majority of physical card signers within a year in order to
trigger a union election. And, administratively, administrations have
eroded the right to strike by refusing to release workers from
mediation when at an impasse with the corporations. There has been no
change to the law that for more than 70 years provided workers with the
ability to threaten or carry out the right to strike in order to come
to an agreement with the airlines. But beginning in the late 1990's,
negotiations shifted from an average of 18 months to more than 5
years--delaying improvements and causing workers to fall further
behind. There's been no change to the law, but a disdain for collective
bargaining and worker rights led to a destruction of the right to
strike by refusing to release the parties from mediation and set a
strike deadline. The last release was given in 2010 for the Spirit
Pilots who achieved a contract after only a handful of days on strike.
From routine use of the strike deadline to encourage the parties to
reach agreement to one release in 20 years, workers have suffered the
cost of never-ending negotiations. And companies have suffered the cost
of eroded morale and inability to attract candidates to aviation jobs.
Everyone has something to lose in a strike--the company and the
workers--and it is a critical component to effective collective
bargaining that balances interests and maintains a more just economy.
Our union will press our rights for collective bargaining with the
right to strike that's necessary to achieve the long overdue
improvements we need--double digit pay increases, pay for all of our
time on the job, scheduling protections that help consumers from
operational meltdowns too, and a secure retirement with no additional
costs for our healthcare.
American flight attendants voted 99.5 percent in favor of a strike
if the company fails to meet the demands of flight attendants that are
long overdue. Airlines industry workers were set to negotiate across
the industry in 2020, but the pandemic put that on hold. The Payroll
Support System thankfully maintained the status quo, but without new
contracts workers are falling behind total compensation we had just
prior to 9/11 when adjusted for inflation. Alaska and United flight
attendants are taking strike votes in the near term too. We need and
expect the improvements we have earned, especially in the most
tumultuous time on the job in the history of our careers.
Echoes of the Past
Workers today have more in common with the mineworkers in Ludlow
than you may think, and our fights carry echoes of those historic
fights.
One of the core demands in Ludlow was pay for ``dead work.'' At the
time, miners were paid for the tonnage of coal they dug. Members of the
Committee may remember the miner's refrain, ``You dig 16 tons, and what
do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.'' Work like digging
and fortifying the mines was considered ``dead work'' and unpaid. Not
only did this mean no compensation for backbreaking labor, it pushed
workers to take greater risks to dig more coal. Rather than wait to
fortify a new shaft, workers might continue digging in areas that were
unsafe. When your choice is between feeding your children and waiting
for a safety check, it's easy to choose your children. And when they
emerged from the mines, many miners went to their company-owned home
and used company scrip to buy goods at the company store. They were
often paid too little to cover all the costs the company imposed, so
they went into debt to the companies they worked for and became trapped
by the mine owners.
A year ago, Americans were shocked to learn that Flight Attendants
are not paid until the cabin door closes and the plane pushes back from
the gate. As our union and our sister unions negotiate new contracts,
we're demanding an end to that ``dead work'' and pay for the full time
we're on the job.
Teamsters and Auto Workers one hundred years ago demanded the 8-
hour workday, workplace safety rules, equal pay and fair benefits. In
their landmark contracts, Teamsters and Auto Workers secured rules
against forced overtime, unsafe working conditions and an end to the
two-tier wage systems that left some workers forever earning too little
to get ahead.
We may not live in company towns or shop at company stores, but
more and more jobs don't cover the cost of living. More and more of us
struggle to pay rising rents in apartments owned by the same Wall
Street investment firms that are pushing our employers to cut our pay
and benefits, and pushing grocery stores and for-profit hospitals to
raise prices for customers and lower wages for workers. The unbridled
greed of the billionaire class undergirds our struggles at every turn,
just as it did when J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and John D.
Rockefeller, Sr. controlled our economy more than 100 years ago.
The way the ownership class views working people hasn't changed
much in those hundred years. After the Ludlow Massacre and the
Coalfield Wars in 1914, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was called before
Congress, where he testified that even knowing his hired goons had
committed murder he ``would have taken no action'' \7\ to stop them
from attacking more strikers.
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\7\ https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5735/.
A few weeks into the writers' and actors' strikes this year, an
anonymous executive told an industry press outlet ``The endgame is to
allow things to drag on until union members start losing their
apartments and losing their houses.'' \8\
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\8\ https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/07/studios-
allegedly-wont-end-strike-til-writers-start-losing-their-apartments.
Just as Rockefeller's words galvanized workers AND Congress to act,
the studios' disrespect spurred writers and actors to greater
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
solidarity.
The last time actors and writers went on strike together in 1960,
they demanded residuals for TV and film, investment in their health and
pension funds. In the deals negotiated this year through record-
breaking strikes, writers and actors won residuals for their work on
streaming productions, improved pay, working conditions and benefits.
Perhaps most notably, both groups beat back the idea that they could be
replaced by artificial intelligence and the disgusting proposals that
their works and their likenesses could become property of the studios
to replicate and profit from in perpetuity.
My union is proud to be the next tip in the spear for working
people. We are engaged in a years-long fight at America's largest
airlines. At Delta, as I mentioned before, Flight Attendants are coming
together in an inspiring campaign to unionize the last major American
carrier where our flying partners have no protections, no guarantees
and no rights on the job. Delta's profits exceed the other airlines by
billions. As President Shawn Fain has said, ``record profits require
record contracts.'' While we work together to build solidarity, Delta
management has repeatedly demonstrated its disdain for workers, for
example by proposing that instead of forming a union workers should buy
an X-Box.
At legacy carriers like United, Alaska and American, our union and
our sister union the Association of Professional Flight Attendants
(APFA) are fighting for a fair share of the record profits that we
create, protections from violence and harassment on the job, and a
greater say in our workplaces.
I must tell you this: I have never seen workers so united. At
Delta, as I mentioned before, Flight Attendants, Ramp agents and
mechanics are all organizing. In the past, management has told us that
if one of us gets more, someone must get less. But today AFA, the
Teamsters and the IAM are working together to support these courageous
workers, and we are all supported by the Air Line Pilots Association.
For generations, AFA and APFA were fed rumors about one another that
seeped from management and poisoned our ability to work together. But
today, we have overcome those divide-and-conquer strategies and we are
united as one workforce to fight for the contracts and respect on the
job flight attendants and other aviation workers deserve.
You see it everywhere you look. The baristas who make your coffee.
The clerks who bag your groceries. The pharmacists who fill your
prescriptions. The teachers who nurture your children. Bus drivers,
delivery workers, hotel staff, electricians. Across our economy,
workers are coming together to fight for our fair share, for a decent
life and a shot to live the American dream. This year, support for
unions--and Americans' desire to have a union in their workplace--rose
to the highest level in recorded history.
SkyWest Airlines Has Broken Labor Law for Years--We've Had to Take
Them to Court
AFA has filed a Federal lawsuit against SkyWest Airlines, the
regional airline that operates flights for Delta, Alaska, United, and
American, and the SkyWest Inflight Association after the airline fired
two longtime Flight Attendants, Tresa Grange with nearly 25 years with
the company and Shane Price with 9 years. These Flight Attendants were
fired for being lead activists who brought to light significant
credible concerns over the voting procedures for the SkyWest Inflight
Association.
The SkyWest Inflight Association is an organization illegally
propped up by SkyWest management that pretends to independently
represent the flight attendants at SkyWest but is instead completely
funded by SkyWest management. The way that SIA operates tricks flight
attendants that they have a union without providing the same benefits
that a union provides under the Railway Labor Act.
This lawsuit is filed to remedy SkyWest Airlines' extraordinary
violations of the Railway Labor Act and interference with its Flight
Attendants' Federal right to seek collective bargaining
representation,'' the complaint reads, \9\ ``SkyWest unlawfully uses
carrier funds to maintain and operate Defendant SkyWest Inflight
Association, which it claims is the representative for its Flight
Attendant employees. SIA has acknowledged in one of its Handbooks that
`SkyWest . . . funds the SkyWest Inflight Association.' ''
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\9\ 2-23-cv-00723.pdf.
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Fight the Right Fight
For decades, the billionaires convinced us to fight one another.
And they're trying as hard as they can today. If you watch the news you
might believe we're more divided than we've ever been. And it's true
that our politics are creating enormous strain on our relationships
with one another and with the very idea of America--a country rich with
diversity of experience, ideas, and strength from people around the
world.
But when you walk into a union meeting, you see that we can find
common ground. That's what the billionaires are afraid of. When I say
``start in the workplace and the politics will follow,'' I mean that
workplace solidarity overcomes the politics of division and that money
doesn't control our politics when workers organize to take our fair
share and claim our fair say in our democracy. When we realize that if
the boss can fire you because of who you love or where you come from,
he can fire me because of what I believe. When we understand that we
are only as strong as the worker next to us, we want to make sure the
worker next to us has the strength to fight--and sometimes that means
lending them our strength, as the mineworkers did for the UAW's
earliest fights, and as many of us have done for others over the
generations.
A union meeting is always a raucous place. But in our meetings, we
learn democracy. We learn how to disagree but come together in the end.
We learn how to make decisions for the greater good. We learn to
negotiate, to collaborate, to listen and to find mutual respect--even
in places where it seems impossible.
When we find solidarity, we find power. We can use that power to
hold capital accountable, to ensure that our voices are heard, our
contributions respected and our work rewarded. When we build that power
in the workplace, we build power in society. It's no mistake that even
some of the most anti-union elected officials were out on the UAW's
picket lines. They may vote against us when the chips are down, but
they understand that there is power in our unions. There's a reason
that Joe Biden became the first sitting President of the United States
to walk a picket line. Yes, it's because he's a union man. But working
people built the political power to make it possible for him to step
out and clearly support us.
That is what the exploiters fear; that our solidarity will build
enough power to hold capital accountable to working people. For fifty
years, more and more of the benefits of capitalism have gone to a tiny
few at the top. Today, income is more unequal than even in the Gilded
Age. A handful of individuals control more wealth than the bottom half
combined. Real wages have stagnated while they built mega-yachts and
flew private jets to their tropical islands--and put politicians and
judges on those jets and yachts beside them.
I have a question for this Committee, and a message for those
billionaires who want to bleed the working class and the world dry. To
the billionaires I say: there is plenty for everyone. You can still be
fabulously wealthy, but if you continue to try to keep us poor you will
find that working people are not going to take it anymore. To the
Members of this Committee, to the elected leaders across this country
and around the world, I ask you the question that working people have
asked for generations: Which side are you on?
Conclusion
Thank you to Chairman Sanders and Dr. Cassidy for the opportunity
to testify today. Unions are necessary for a stable economy, our
safety, our security, and our democracy. Nothing is more important for
our Nation to succeed than unions, collective bargaining, dialog
required between divergent groups, solutions to the existential threats
we face, and the strength and future of our world and nation. The
Association of Flight Attendants-CWA is prepared to do our part. I look
forward to your questions.
______
The Chair. Thank you very much. Our next witness is Diana
Furchtgott Roth, the Director of the Center for Energy, Climate
Environment, and the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in Energy
and Environmental Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Ms.
Furchtgott Roth is an Oxford educated economist--pardon me?
Senator Cassidy. Wasn't I going to introduce her?
The Chair. All right.
Senator Cassidy. I get to introduce you. So----
[Laughter.]
Ms. Furchtgott Roth. Yes.
Senator Cassidy. I will also point out that the Chairman's
witnesses all got at least a minute and a half or 2 minutes
more to speak, so--and I knew you would do that. Very gracious.
I am pleased to introduce a witness whose work focuses on
policies promoting economic growth and individual freedom.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is the Director of the Center for
Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation,
and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at George Washington
University.
She has worked in senior roles in the White House and also
served in appointive positions at several agencies. The author
and coauthor of six books and hundreds of articles on economic
policy, including Regulating to Disaster, How Green Jobs
Policies Are Destroying America's Economy.
Ms. Furchtgott Roths testimony will discuss the
implications to the U.S. auto industry of the Biden
administration's EV mandates and how the recent UAW agreement
with automakers accelerates the loss of American auto jobs.
She will also testify on the reasons workers choose not to
join a union. Ms. Furchtgott Roth received economics degrees
from Swarthmore College and Oxford University. Welcome. We
appreciate you being here and look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF DIANA FURCHTGOTT ROTH, DIRECTOR, CEN-
TER FOR ENERGY, CLIMATE, AND ENVIRONMENT AND THE
HERBERT, JOYCE MORGAN FELLOW IN ENERGY AND ENVI-
RONMENTAL POLICY, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, WASH-
INGTON, DC
Ms. Furchtgott Roth. Thank you very much, Chairman Sanders,
Ranking Member, Dr. Cassidy, Members of the Committee. I am
honored to be invited to testify before you today.
The UAW had such a single minded focus on getting more
money for their members that they forgot even to try to help
out farmers, families, and other workers and unions.
The Biden administration's electric vehicle mandate puts
the economy at the mercy of Government dictates in a planned
economy that will destroy the livelihoods of small business,
non-unionized workers, and eventually even unionized auto
workers without making car companies more competitive or
solving climate change challenges.
This will put our children's future at the mercy of China.
If the UAW were truly interested in helping its members and
American families, it would have pushed for Detroit and other
auto companies to try to make--to continue to make the internal
combustion engines and hybrids that Americans want to buy,
rather than going all electric in 2035.
What would help all American working families is getting
rid of the Biden EV mandate, which you, Senators and the House
of Representatives did not pass. Instead, the UAW talks on its
website of a ``just transition'' to electric vehicles.
It is not justice to make cars that are so expensive that
most Americans can't afford to buy them. The electric version
of the F-150 pickup truck costs $26,000 more than the gasoline
version. It loses battery range when it is cold or when it has
to tow something, and it takes an hour to recharge, and that is
if the charger works, and no one is ahead of you in line.
Plus, going electric offshores American jobs to China,
including slave labor in Xinjiang because the Chinese make 80
percent of the world's batteries. Ford Motor Company President
Jim Farley estimated that with all EVs, the auto industry will
need 400,000 fewer jobs in the long run.
The EV plan is poison for auto workers, small businesses
such as plumbers, electricians, and auto repair shops and
farmers who rely on gasoline powered engines for pickup trucks
and equipment. Ford is losing $60,000 per EV sold and unsold
EVs are piling up on dealers' lots.
GM and Ford announced they are cutting back on projections
of EV sales and lowering production targets for cars and
batteries and postponing over $15 billion in EV investment.
There will also be with EVs layoffs in auto parts companies and
among your local mechanics who repair your gasoline powered
cars.
Unions act in their own interests, as can be seen by the
simple focus on UAW member pay at the cost of the interests of
members of other unions. When auto workers were on strike pay
of $500 a week, union leaders were still collecting their full
salaries, in some cases, over a quarter of a million dollars a
year.
Only 10 percent of American workers and 6 percent of
American private sector workers belong to a union in 2022, down
from 33 percent in the 1950's and 20 percent in the 1980's, but
some Members of Congress are still trying to push Americans
into unions. Why the decline in membership? Union corruption is
endemic, and Americans don't like it.
Teamsters drove yellow trucking into bankruptcy with a loss
of 30,000 jobs. Stellantis, former Fiat, Chrysler, and the UAW
are still under Federal oversight.
Stellantis admitted to making more than $3.5 million in
illegal payments to UAW union bosses, including, and I quote,
``extravagant meals, rounds of golf, lavish parties for the UAW
International Executive Board, an Italian made shotgun,
clothing, designer shoes, and other personal items paid for
with credit cards issued by the Joint Training Center,'' which
was the UAW, Chrysler's Skill Development and Training Program.
FCA executives also paid off the $262,000 home mortgage of
former UAW Vice President General Holiefield. Holiefield and
his widow also received hundreds of thousands of dollars
directed through Holiefield's purported charitable
organization.
I would like to submit the U.S. Office of Eastern District
of Michigan March 1, 2021 press release on Fiat Chrysler's
guilty plea for the record. Working families also don't want to
pay money into failed pensions.
Last year, Congress spent $36 billion in taxpayer funds to
shore up failing union pension plans, such as the Central
States Pension Fund.
Otherwise, 2.5 million union workers and retirees would not
have received their promised pensions because unions didn't
take care to fund members' pensions, although their own
pensions were fully funded.
Even after the massive taxpayer funded bailout, plans are
in trouble. In 2023, the Labor Department listed 45 union plans
in critical status, which is defined as less than 65 percent
funded, or an endangered status, with less than 80 percent
funded.
Unions desperately need new workers to join because they
pay contributions to pension plans for many years without
withdrawing money. While this year's critical status notices,
and it is on the Department of Labor website, include bakery
drivers, Local 80-802 Pension Fund, IBT Local 840 Pension Plan,
ironworkers, bricklayers, carpenters, the Local 945 IBT Pension
Plan, Teamsters Local 469 Pension Plan.
I don't have time to read them all, so I would like to
submit the entire 2023 Department of Labor list for the record.
Union leaders and their allies on Capitol Hill believe the way
to increase membership after decades of decline is to pass the
Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize, PRO Act,
which would force workers into corrupt unions with unfunded
pensions.
The PRO Act would harm millions of small businesses and
people who work as independent contractors and in the franchise
business center. Many would lose businesses and their jobs. It
would weaken the right to a secret ballot in elections for
union representation, even though Mr. Fain, seated here,
insisted on a secret ballot for his election as union
President.
This gives union officials the power to intimidate workers
because they know how they vote, where they live, and where
their children go to school. In a highly competitive economy,
with 9.6 million unfilled jobs, workers have many options and
shouldn't be forced by the PRO Act to pay union dues and fund
failing union pension plans.
Workers don't trust union leaders, and the new UAW contract
provides additional justification. Many thanks.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Furchtgott Roth follows:]
prepared statement of diana furchtgott-roth
Missed Opportunity: How the UAW Has Failed America's Working Families
My name is Diana Furchtgott-Roth. I am the director of the Center
for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation. The
views I express in this testimony are my own and should not be
construed as representing any official position of The Heritage
Foundation.
Chairman Sanders, Ranking Member Cassidy, Members of the Committee,
I am honored to be invited to testify before you today on the subject
of ``Missed Opportunity: How the UAW Has Failed Working Families.'' In
addition to my role at The Heritage Foundation, I am also an adjunct
professor of economics at George Washington University. My professional
training is in economics. From 2019 to 2021 I was deputy assistant
secretary for research and technology at the U.S. Department of
Transportation. Previous positions include acting assistant secretary
for economic policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury; chief
economist at the U.S. Department of Labor; and chief of staff of the
Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.
Today I'd like to make the following points:
If the UAW were truly helping its members, it would have negotiated
for the auto companies to continue to make the internal combustion
engines and hybrids that Americans want to buy, rather than going all
electric in 2035. What would help all American working families is
getting rid of electric vehicle (EV) mandate--which Congress did not
pass. Administration is doing an end run around Congress.
Only 6 percent of private-sector American workers belong to unions,
because they do not think that the dues are a worthwhile investment of
their hard-earned dollars and they don't want the inflexibility of a
union environment. The PRO Act would not help workers, who should have
the freedom to join unions using a secret ballot, and also to leave
unions when they choose to do so.
New UAW Contract is Missed Opportunity
Not only does the new UAW contract make GM, Ford and Stellantis
uncompetitive with non-union automakers, but it preserves the
automakers' plans to eliminate production of internal combustion engine
cars by 2035.
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain has repeatedly spoken out
against EVs because he knows that electrification of the automobile
will mean fewer auto workers. To give one example, he said in a
statement on April 26, 2023, ``Stellantis' push to cut thousands of
jobs while raking in billions in profits is disgusting. This is a slap
in the face to our members, their families, their communities, and the
American people who saved this company 15 years ago. Even now,
politicians and taxpayers are bankrolling the electric vehicle
transition, and this is the thanks the working class gets. Shame on
Stellantis.'' \1\1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ United Auto Workers, UAW Statement on Job Cuts at Stellantis,
https://uaw.org/uaw-statement-job-cuts-stellantis (accessed May 1,
2023).
The renegotiation of the UAW contract was an opportunity for the
UAW to make Detroit automakers go back on their promise of electrifying
the fleet by 2035. Yet the UAW in its new contracts did not succeed in
getting the Detroit automakers to give up making the cars people want
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
to buy.
Ford Motor Company president Jim Farley estimated that the industry
will need 40 percent fewer workers to produce EVs rather than gas-
powered cars and light trucks. That's 200,000 fewer jobs in 2030 and
400,000 fewer jobs in the long run. The EV plan is poison for auto
workers and the UAW should have tried to change it.
This was the ideal time to apply pressure because Detroit
automakers are waking up to reality. Ford is losing $60,000 per EV sold
and unsold EVs are piling up on dealers' lots. After promising the
Biden administration that they would eliminate most of the cars
Americans want to buy from dealer lots by 2035, GM and Ford last month
announced they are cutting back on projections of EV sales and lowering
production targets for the cars and batteries.
Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said on a media call,
``Given the dynamic EV environment, we are being judicious about our
production and adjusting future capacity to better match market
demand.'' He announced that Ford is postponing $12 billion of spending
and investment on EVs, including a Kentucky battery plant, after it
halted its $3.5 billion Michigan-China battery partnership in
September.
This follows an announcement by General Motors on Oct. 17 that it
is pausing expansion of electric pickups ``due to evolving EV demand.''
A new UAW contract should have forced the Detroit automakers to
shelve plans to go all electric.
It is not only auto company employees are hurt by plans to go all
EV. There will also be layoffs in auto parts companies, and mechanics
who repair gasoline-powered cars. EVs have fewer parts, and the new
batteries come from China. Local mechanics who repair internal
combustion engine cars now will not be able to repair EVs. It is a
tragedy that Americans' jobs in auto plants, in auto parts
manufacturing, and in auto repair and upkeep are being sacrificed to
Chinese nationals (sometimes with forced labor) making EVs, batteries
and electric vehicle components.
Detroit auto makers are going along with new proposed regulations
on automobile emissions from the Environmental Protection Agency that
would require new car sales to be 60 percent battery powered electric
by 2030 and 67 percent by 2032, compared to fewer than 6 percent in
2022. EPA is also planning new rules for power plants, driving up the
costs of the electricity needed to charge these vehicles. These rules
would not only eliminate American auto-related jobs but raise driving
costs for Americans.
The UAW could have helped all American families by taking a stand
against EVs in the negotiation process. But it did not. Most Americans
prefer a gasoline-powered vehicle. The best-selling car in America is
the Ford F-150 pickup truck. Small businesses, farmers, and Americans
who need to get to work, school, or shopping use these vehicles every
day.
New electric vehicles cost more than gasoline-powered vehicles. The
electric version of the base version of the Ford 150 pickup truck, the
best-selling vehicle in America, costs an additional $26,000. Tesla's
base prices start at about $40,000 for a Model 3 and go up to almost
$100,000 for a Model X. These are staggering costs to impose on
American families. Cars are part of the American Dream for many
Americans, a dream that for too many American families is put out of
reach by these new regulations.
Charging will also cost more. At the same time as EPA has proposed
new rules for automobile emissions, it has also proposed new rules for
emissions from power plants. EPA plans to regulate carbon dioxide and
other so-called greenhouse gas emissions from both new and existing
natural gas and coal-fired power plants, and require carbon capture
systems or a switch to hydrogen fuels. These systems for capturing
carbon are costly and will be passed on to consumers in the form of
higher electricity rates. Drivers will find it more expensive to use
electricity for all purposes, including charging their electric
vehicles, harming poor and middle-class drivers the most.
Recharging an electric vehicle from empty can take over an hour,
compared to 5 minutes to fill up with gas. If there is a line to use
the charging station the wait can double. Most people do not want to
let their EV battery go below 20 percent, and the charging rate goes
down when it is charged over 80 percent. Throughout America the poor
rarely have access to indoor garages for overnight charging, and in
most large cities, such as New York City, the middle-class also have no
access to indoor charging. Using charging stations on the street, if
available, risks theft of expensive charging cables.
Battery-powered vehicles lack sufficient range to satisfy most
American families. Although 60 to 70 miles of range is enough for most
trips, people buy cars for all circumstances, including vacations and
cold weather. Moreover, batteries lose up to 40 percent of their range
in cold climates. A study by Autocar shows that electric vehicles lose,
on average, a third of their range in the winter, which reduces the
typical 240-mile range to 160 miles. If a heat pump is added to the
car, the loss is less, but still the 240-mile range would shrink to
180.
The loss of range in cold weather is one reason why, at the end of
2021, the latest full year available, North Dakota had 380 electric
vehicle (EV) registrations, the fewest in the United States. Wyoming
has 510 registered EVs, South Dakota had 680 EVs, and Alaska had 1,290.
In comparison, there were 563,070 registered EVs in California and
95,640 in Florida.
Minerals such as lithium and cobalt are essential for batteries.
Mining for these minerals is energy-intensive, and the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) has facilitated access to domestic and foreign
minerals for battery production. Lithium is mined in western China's
Qinghai Province, aided by government funding, and China purchases
cobalt for electric batteries from Kisanfu, in the Democratic Republic
of Congo. The United States makes opening new mines virtually
impossible, even though the jobs generated would help all Americans,
particularly the poor and middle class. Thus, EVs will result in a
massive increase in mining in countries that have no respect for the
environment or human welfare. The sorts of mining that will be
conducted as a result of the rule will be bad for the environment and
are frequently performed by child workers.
Electric vehicles are not emissions free. In addition to batteries
made with fossil fuels, increased electricity demand places additional
stress on the electrical grid, as California has found out from rolling
blackouts. Electricity to charge EVs is made with natural gas and coal,
because wind and solar powers a small share of America's electricity.
EPA admits that ``We expect that in some areas, increased electricity
generation would increase ambient SO2, PM 2.5, ozone, or some air
toxics.''
Union Membership and the PRO Act
Unions do not act in the interests of all American families, but in
their own interests. Although American families find better uses than
union dues for their hard-earned dollars, and union membership has been
declining for decades, some in Congress are still trying to push
Americans into unions. The latest data from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics show that 6 percent of private sector workers belonged to a
union in 2022, down from 6.1 percent in 2021. The total union
membership rate was 10.1 percent in 2022, down from 10.3 percent in
2021. During the 1950's, one third of American workers belonged to
unions, and in 1983, the last year for which comparable data exists,
20.1 percent of workers belonged to unions.
Although this is not a problem for American workers, who get to
keep more of paychecks, it is a problem for union leaders, because
their salaries depend on union dues and initiation fees. That's why
union leaders and their supporters are trying to change the law to
force hard-working Americans into unions through the Richard L. Trumka
Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2023 (PRO Act), a bill that
would expand the power of union leaders at the expense of workers.
American workers have been wise to reject union membership. Before
Congress passed the American Rescue Plan in 2022, which authorized $36
billion in taxpayer funds to shore up failing union pension plans, such
as the Central States Pension Fund, 2.5 million union workers and
retirees would not have received their promised pensions because unions
did not take care to fund members' pensions. Even after the massive
taxpayer-funded pension bailout, plans are in trouble. In 2023, the
Labor Department listed 45 union plans in critical status, defined as
less than 65 percent funded, or in endangered status, with less than 80
percent funded. Unions desperately need new workers to join, because
they pay contributions for many years without withdrawing money.
Union leaders and their allies on Capitol Hill believe the way to
increase membership after decades of decline is to pass the PRO Act,
which would make it easier to organize workers against their will. The
idea behind the PRO Act, and different proposed regulations now being
issued by the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations
Board, is to encourage employment by large businesses rather than by
small franchised businesses or free-lance work. Workers in the gig
economy are seen as falling through the cracks in a fissured workplace,
to use the words of Professor David Weil, former administrator of the
Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor.
The PRO Act would restrict the ability to be an independent
contractor, and it would attempt to define employees of franchised
businesses as employees of the corporations that manage the franchise.
This would harm millions of working Americans who work as independent
contractors and in the franchise business sector.
The PRO Act would weaken the right to a secret ballot in elections
for union representation, providing scope for intimidation and
corruption by exposing workers' votes to employers, colleagues, and
union officials. It would allow the National Labor Relations Board to
overturn secret ballot elections and put in place a union using signed
cards, which are not secret.
Equally harmful, the PRO Act would impose mandatory binding
arbitration on contracts between workers and employers, if the union
and the employer fail to reach an agreement on pay and benefits. These
mandatory terms are unprecedented in American labor law and revoke the
basic principle of collective bargaining--that employers and unions are
free to disagree unless they voluntarily accept arbitration.
Another provision in the PRO Act would abolish right-to-work laws
passed in 27 states. These laws protect workers by stating that
employers cannot force employees to join a union as a condition of
employment. Many right-to-work states have lower unemployment rates and
higher rates of economic growth than other states.
Proposed penalties from the PRO Act include fining employers that
hold staff meetings at which union organizing is discussed; and
creating new fines of $50,000 per firm for unfair labor practices. Such
fines could put small firms out of business or discourage them from
challenging union organizing.
In our highly competitive economy with 9.6 million unfilled jobs,
workers have many options and shouldn't be forced by the PRO Act to pay
union dues and fund failing union pension plans. Many Americans believe
they can get great pay, safe working conditions, and wonderful benefits
without help from a union. Workers may not want to have an adversarial
relationship with their employer, instead they may want to feel pride
in their career and their employer. Big union contracts may be too
risky for the business in the long-term and ultimately may have a
negative impact on job security. Workers don't trust union leaders, and
the new UAW contract provides additional justification.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to testify today. I would be
glad to take questions.
______
The Chair. Thank you. Senator Cassidy are you going to
introduce the next----
Senator Cassidy. Yes. My next witness is Sean Higgins. Mr.
Higgins is a Research Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, specializing in labor and employment issues. As a
journalist, he has covered the intersection of politics and
economics for two decades.
He was a Senior Writer for the Washington Examiner,
Washington correspondent for Investor's Business Daily, and a
contributor to publications including Reason Magazine and
National Review Online.
His scholarship includes a study on the long forgotten
legislative history of the National Labor Relations Board Act
and an analysis of the PRO Act. His testimony will discuss how
the NLRA was intended to protect the rights of individual
workers to join or not join a union, and how the PRO Act does
little to expand the rights of individual workers.
Mr. Higgins, welcome. Thanks for being here. We look
forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF SEAN HIGGINS, RESEARCH FELLOW,
COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, ARLINGTON, VA
Mr. Higgins. Thank you. I will try and keep this within 5
minutes. Chairman Sanders, Dr. Cassidy, Members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My
name is Sean Higgins, and I am a Research Fellow for the
Competitive Enterprise Institute.
CEI first and foremost stands for the individual worker. We
support the workers' right to engage in collective bargaining
and the right to refrain from engaging in it, support the
rights of the individual worker to do as they choose and oppose
any encroachment upon those rights.
Preserving the right to dissent, to stand apart from and
oppose the crowd, no matter how unpopular that stance might be
to others, is important and should be protected just as much in
this sphere of labor as is in civil rights. Those rights must
be remembered as we consider the impact of labor unions.
I would like to start by discussing a bit about the
National Labor Relations Act itself, because my research
suggests the principal author of the Act would agree. The
introductory section of the law says, ``it is declared to be
the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of
certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce
and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have
occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of
collective bargaining.''
The sections use of the word encouraging is often cited by
individuals as the rationale for legislation or Federal rules
designed to prod workers into joining unions. That the Federal
Government's role is to encourage unionization. That is not
what the law's author and New York Senator Robert Wagner, a
Democrat, said at the time of its passage, however.
His view is that the Government should be a neutral
arbiter. He would defend the rights of those--it would defend
the rights of those who sought to engage in collective
bargaining, provided that doing so was their own affirmative
choice.
In testimony before this very same Committee in 1935,
Senator Wagner said, ``that is all this bill does so far as I
can see. It leaves the worker a free man to organize or not to
organize as he chooses and that is all it does.''
Lest you think I am taking a single section out of context,
in another exchange with another witness in the hearings,
Columbia University Economist, Dr. Paul Brissenden, Senator
Wagner denounced the, ``propaganda, which has been pretty
widespread, that the purpose of this Act is to impose some
particular union upon the manufacturers of the United States.
This bill does not do anything of this kind except that it
does make the worker a free man, so he may decide whether he
wants a union or not. And if he wants one, what particular
union he wants to represent him, or whether he wants to remain
unorganized.''
The NLRA, as it should be understood, was originally fix it
legislation. Collective bargaining rights for private sector
workers in general was first granted in 1933 as National
Industrial Recovery Act.
With Federal law now affirming the right to collective
bargaining, unions at the time made a concerted push to
organize industries that had previously resisted it. The
industrial leaders of the time fought this with strikebreakers
and 1934 became one of the bloodiest years ever for labor
unrest.
This tied up all manner of commerce. Factories went idle.
Goods didn't ship. As the Country was still trying to get out
of the Great Depression. A second related problem emerged,
corporations responded to the new Federal law with a, if you
can't beat them, join them attitude, and created unions of
their own for their employees to join.
If you work for GM, congratulations, you can now join the
Chevrolet Employees Association. Quite a few GM employees did.
The degree to which they were pressured to do so was unclear.
The independent unions at the time called these company union
sham organizations for the obvious reason.
A company run union has a clear conflict of interest and
therefore--and was therefore unlikely to properly serve the
interests of the workers. That said, such organizations did not
appear to be illegal under the Industrial Recovery Act.
Wagner's NLRA was meant to rectify this, to assert--to
affirm the right to collective bargaining, while also ensuring
that workers were not coerced into joining labor unions they
did not wish to join or did not reflect their interests.
``That is all--that is what I am interested in. Whatever
the men want to do. If they want to bargain individually or
through an organization within a plant, that is all right, only
if it is the free choice of the men,'' Wagner told this
Committee.
It should be further noted that the NLRA section
encouraging collective bargaining follows a preamble about
certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce
and the need to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when
they have occurred.
In short, encouraging collective bargaining is called for
as a solution when labor unrest has created a ripple effect
that threatens the broader economy. This is a reference to the
violence that occurred in the year before the law's passage.
The purpose of this hearings is to tout and promote unions
as a boon to the economy and to workers. CEI does support a
worker's right to engage in collective bargaining. It also
supports the worker's right not to engage or otherwise opt out.
Attempts to expand collective bargaining by workers can easily
fall into the trap of coercing workers and making them do
things on the basis of, for your own good.
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act would, for
example, strip workers in 27 states of the right to decide for
themselves if they wish to join or otherwise support a union.
Nothing about a right to work law prevents workers from joining
or being active in unions, if they wish, however. They simply
preserve the right of the individual to dissent. The best force
for raising a lot of the individual workers is a strong economy
with a tight labor market.
We have seen over the last year and a half what happens
when employers are put in the position of having to compete for
workers. Wages rise and benefits expand on their own. With
that, I thank you and I am happy to take any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Higgins follows:]
prepared statement of sean higgins
Chairman Sanders, Dr. Cassidy, ladies and gentlemen of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is
Sean Higgins and I am a research fellow for the Competitive Enterprise
Institute.
CEI first and foremost stands for the individual worker. We support
the worker's right to engage in collective bargaining and their right
to refrain from engaging in it. We support the rights of the individual
worker to do as they choose and oppose any encroachments upon those
rights. Preserving the right to dissent, to stand apart from and oppose
the crowd, no matter unpopular that stance might be to others, is
important and should be protected just as much in the sphere of labor
rights as it is in civil rights.
Those rights must be remembered as we consider the impact of labor
unions. I would like to start by discussing a bit about the National
Labor Relations Act itself, because my research suggests the principal
author of the act would agree.
The introductory section of the law says: ``It is declared to be
the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain
substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate
and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging
the practice and procedure of collective bargaining.''
The section's use of the word ``encouraging'' is often cited by
individuals as the rationale for legislation or Federal rules designed
to prod workers into joining unions--That the Federal Government's role
is to encourage unionization.
This is not what the law's author, New York Senator Robert Wagner,
said at the time of its passage. His view was that the government
should be a neutral arbiter. It would defend the rights of those who
sought to engage in collective bargaining, provided that doing so was
their own affirmative choice. In testimony before this very same
Committee in 1935, Senator Wagner said ``That is all that this bill
does, so far as I can see. It leaves the worker a free man to organize
or not to organize as he chooses, and that is all it does.''
Lest you think I am taking a single section out of context, in
another an exchange with another witness in the hearings, Columbia
University economist Dr. Paul Brissenden, Senator Wagner denounced,
``[The] propaganda, which has been pretty widespread, that the purpose
of this act is to impose some particular union upon the manufacturers
of the United States . . . this bill does not do anything of this kind
except that it does make a worker a free man so he may decide whether
he wants a union or not, and, if he wants one, what particular union he
wants to represent him, or whether he wants to remain unorganized.''
Wagner said in an April, 1935 nationwide radio address, ``The
malicious falsehood has been widely circulated that the measure was
designed to force men into unions, although the text provides in simple
English prose that workers shall be absolutely free to belong or to
refrain from belonging to any organization.''
The NLRA, it should be understood, was originally fix-it
legislation. The first Federal law to include collective bargaining
rights was the Railway Labor Act in 1926, but that was limited to the
transportation industry. Collective bargaining rights for private
sector workers in general was first granted in 1933's National
Industrial Recovery Act. The hope at the time--this was the Great
Depression--was that collective bargaining would increase worker wages.
The law inadvertently sparked a year of unprecedented labor strife.
With Federal law now affirming the right to collective bargaining,
unions made a concerted push to organize industries that had previously
resisted it. The industrial leaders of the time fought this with strike
breakers and 1934 became one of the bloodiest, if not the bloodiest,
years ever for labor unrest. This tied up all manner of commerce--
factories went idle, goods didn't ship--as the country was still trying
to get out of the Great Depression.
A second, related problem emerged: Corporations responded to the
new Federal law with a ``if you can't beat'em, join `em'' attitude and
created unions of their own for their employees to join. If you worked
for GM, congratulations, you could now join the ``Chevrolet Employees
Association.'' Quite a few GM employees did. The degree to which they
were pressured to do so was unclear. The independent unions of the time
call these company unions sham organizations for the obvious reason: A
company-run union has a clear conflict of interest and was therefore
unlikely to properly serve the interests of the workers. That said,
such organizations did not appear to be illegal under the Industrial
Recovery Act.
A final problem was that the Industrial Recovery Act was itself
being challenged and would eventually be declared unconstitutional by
the courts for reasons not directly related to its labor provisions.
Wagner's NLRA was meant to rectify this: to affirm the right to
collective bargaining and protect the exercise of it while also
ensuring that workers were not coerced into joining labor unions that
they did not wish to join or did not reflect their interests. He
attempted to thread this needle by affirming that joining in collective
bargaining was an individual right and that refraining to join was just
as valid of a choice. The worker's interest came first, regardless of
what it was.
``That is what I am interested in. Whatever the men want to do, if
they want to bargain individually, or through an organization within a
plant, that is all right, only if it is the free choice of the men. Of
course, we are all for that. That is all I am seeking to do, to make
the worker a free man to make his choice, and I think I have been
emphasizing that,'' Wagner told this Committee.
It should be further noted that the NLRA's section ``encouraging''
collective bargaining follows a preamble about ``certain substantial
obstructions to the free flow of commerce'' and the need to ``mitigate
and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred.'' In short,
encouraging collective bargaining is called for as a solution when
labor unrest has created a ripple effect that threatens the broader
economy. This is a reference to the violence that occurred in the year
before the law's passage.
The Biden administration's decision last year to step in and force
a contract on the railroad industry and its unions is the type of
scenario that was being envisioned in the NLRA--even if that particular
action involved the Railway Labor Act. The administration feared that a
strike by the railway workers would create a replay of the supply chain
crisis of 2021 and so it stepped in and bound both sides to a contract
to prevent that potential economic disruption.
Incidentally, CEI opposed the Biden administration's intervention
in that instance. We believed there was still time remaining for
railroad industry management and the unions to strike a deal on their
own. It's not uncommon for such negotiations to be resolved at the 11th
hour, after all. CEI believes the administration acted prematurely and
out of fear.
The purpose of this hearing is tout and promote labor unions as a
boon to the economy and to workers. The CEI does support a worker's
right to engage in collective bargaining. It also supports a worker's
right not to engage or to otherwise opt out. Attempts to expand
collective bargaining by workers can easily fall into the trap of
coercing workers, of making them do things on the basis of ``for your
own good.'' The Protecting the Right to Organize Act would, for
example, strip workers in 27 states of the right to decide for
themselves if they wish to join or support a union. Nothing about right
to work laws prevent workers from joining and being active in unions if
they wish. They simply preserve the right of the individual to dissent.
The best force for raising the lot of the individual worker is a
strong economy and a tight labor market. We've seen over the last year
and a half what happens when employers are put in the position of
having to compete for workers: wages rise and benefits expand on their
own. The so-called gig economy should also be allowed to flourish. The
ability of workers to sell their labor to the highest bidder--or, to
use the old-fashioned term, ``freelance''--should be encouraged, not
restricted.
With that, I thank you and am happy to take any questions.
______
[summary statement of sean higgins]
CEI support the individual worker's right to engage--and to refrain
from engaging in collective bargaining. The legislative history of the
National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) makes clear that the intent of the
law, as expressed by its author Senator Robert Wagner, was the
government should be a neutral arbiter. It should defend the rights of
those who want to join a union--as long as doing so is their choice.
The NLRA was designed to address worker strife resulting from
workers asserting their collective bargaining rights under the National
Industrial Recovery Act and industrial leaders fighting their attempts
to unionize. This unrest tied up commerce as the country was still
trying to get out of the Great Depression.
Another problem emerged: corporations created unions of their own
for workers to join. These company-run unions had a clear conflict of
interest and were therefore unlikely to serve the interests of workers.
Finally, the National Industry Recovery Act would later be declared
unconstitutional.
These developments set the stage for passage of the NLRA, which was
to protect workers' choice to join or not join a union.
The best force for helping individual workers is a strong economy
and a tight labor market, when employers have to compete for workers.
Attempts to expand collective bargaining, such as the PRO Act, can fall
into the trap of coercing workers to join unions ``for their own
good.''
______
The Chair. Thank you very much. Now we begin the
questioning. Let me ask one question to the three union
representatives here. And it is a two part question.
My first part is, in your experience, how do workers feel
about the reality that there are CEOs in America now make 350
times more than the average worker?
Question No. 1.
Question No. 2, what plans do you have to organize the
unorganized in your areas of influence? Mr. Fain.
Mr. Fain. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess in both those
questions, I mean, the CEO pay issue, obviously we highlighted
that a lot throughout the process. And it is despicable that
someone--it would take one of our workers 350 years to make
what a CEO makes in a year.
The Chair. The head of C--of GM made how much?
Mr. Fain. $29 million.
The Chair. Okay. And--wages at one of the automobile plants
was what?
Mr. Fain. Prior to this contract, $16 something an hour.
But the sad irony in this is just the fact that we workers in
this country are fed up, and that is what this is all about.
It doesn't just matter for UAW members. This is working
class people in general. We have to ask ourselves what kind of
society we want to live in. And co-pays run rampant. We hear
the talk about competition all the time, of being competitive
and us being competitive with the transplants.
But it is funny, I don't hear that talk when it comes to
CEO pay. The average big three CEOs make almost $25 million,
$30 million a year. The average CEOs of the transplants make
around anywhere from $3 to $5 million. But we never hear that
argument.
The Chair. All right. Let me ask you the second part of the
question, organizing efforts. What plans do you have to
organize unorganized workers?
Mr. Fain. We are going to organize like hell. It is--I have
said this throughout the last year that when you bargain good
agreements, when you set a standard, people want to be a part
of that success.
It is what changed my grandparents life. It is what changed
millions of workers' lives in this country back in the 30's,
40's, and 50's, and 60's. And so we have had thousands of
workers from nonunion plants reach out throughout this process,
want to be a part of this, and we are going to go to work.
The Chair. Mr. O'Brien, same question. How do your--how do
workers in general, in your experience, feel about huge income
and wealth inequality we are seeing? What kind of organizing
efforts are you planning?
Mr. O'Brien. Well, I think first and foremost----
The Chair. Microphone, please.
Mr. O'Brien. Sorry. I think first and foremost, Chairman
Sanders our members obviously want to be rewarded for the work
that they do.
I know there was, prior to us coming to the record
settlement with UPS and many other agreements that we have
negotiated in the last 20 months is that people that have never
performed the job, people that have never touched a package,
people that have never went out and delivered through the
toughest times, the pandemic, putting themselves and their
family at risk are rewarding them--with rewarding themselves
with record bonuses and pay and obviously record profits.
All the while, our members were status quo. There is no
doubt that CEO pay has increased, I think, since 1979 on the
average of 1,400 percent. And I think the average U.S. worker,
both nonunion and union combined, has only increased by about
17 percent. So, there is a huge disparity there and our members
don't like it.
But the reality is, is that is why we have the ability to
collectively bargain and hold these employers accountable, and
actually state facts for the record on what our members do as
far as organizing goes.
We are utilizing any and all collective bargaining
agreements, especially now, as a template to show the nonunion
workers the benefits and protections that they will receive
when they join a union. And there is no better testimonial than
actually holding a contract that has been signed by an employer
that guarantees the terms and conditions.
Now, if you would ask a nonunion employer to or if you ask
someone that is nonunion to go to their employer and say, could
you guarantee me these, would that nonunion employer sign that?
The Chair. Okay. Ms. Nelson.
Ms. Nelson. Flight attendants and other workers are enraged
that when they can't make ends meet, that they have got every
person in the house working two and three jobs or overtime just
to try to get by and still scraping from paycheck to paycheck,
that other people are living in lavish, lavish conditions.
That airline executives are hiring private jets to fly them
out of a city that no one else who has to buy a consumer seat
can get anywhere from there. They are absolutely outraged by
it, and that is why they are organizing. Delta Airlines has
made twice in billions what the other airlines have made.
They have written off of the backs of the employees who
have made that airline successful, and they have not paid the
same in pay and benefits. And that is why Delta flight
attendants, Delta mechanics, the Teamsters, and Delta ramp
agents with the International Association of Machinists are
organizing right now to try to take back what is theirs.
As I said before that SkyWest flight attendants have woken
up to what their airlines have tried to do to pull the wool
over their eyes, and they contacted us, and we are eager to
organize. So, we are supporting organizing for over 40,000
workers right now with our union of just over 50,000 workers.
These airlines and these other companies are spending
billions of dollars on union avoidance rather than investing in
the companies to make them better for the consumer and the and
the employees--wasting that money.
But there is another way to go. And Microsoft has decided
that it is better to sign a union neutrality agreement with the
union to give the employees the free right to join the union.
And when a worker comes to a manager to ask them what they
should know about the union, they are giving the supervisors
the instruction to tell them, go to the union website.
That is how it should be done. That is what freedom is and
that is what it would look like to have a free society and an
equal society, is to give workers the power to actually bargain
their fair share.
The Chair. Thank you.
Senator Cassidy.
Senator Cassidy. I am going to defer to Coach Tuberville
first, but I am going to ask that the two documents that Ms.
Furchtgott Roth mentioned be added to the--unanimous consent
that these be added----
The Chair. Without objection.
[The following information can be found on page 73 in
Additional Material:]
Senator Cassidy. Senator Tuberville.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
being here today. Mr. Higgins, our economy is in incredibly
shaky position. Inflation is off the chart, especially after
COVID. With all the strikes over the last few years, has that
played an impact on our economy?
Mr. Higgins. Have the strikes played an----
Senator Tuberville. Yes.
Mr. Higgins. I don't know that they have had much of an
impact as of yet, but certainly the increase in pay is going to
have--it creates the problem of potential wage price spiral and
that could--that will increase inflation itself.
Senator Tuberville. Yes. Mr. O'Brien, we had a hearing not
too long ago about, we are going to be probably over a million
truck drivers short in the next five, six, 7 years. What are
the Teamsters doing in terms of recruiting and planning for
this in terms of recruiting and training?
Mr. O'Brien. Well, I think first and foremost, what I
testified to earlier is very helpful. As a result of us
settling our record UPS agreement, I think some--at the
previous hearing there was some numbers put out.
There were UPS drivers who only made $59,000 per year. That
is not true. On their own website, they make $162,000 per year.
So, by us raising industry standards, that will help in the
recruitment.
We also have a very robust military training program where
people come back from the military and we train them and place
them in companies like ABF, United Parcel Service, T-Force, and
many other partners that we have as employers.
I just want to be clear, not every relationship that we
have with employers is adversarial. We work day and night to
make sure that we create opportunities so that these companies
can be successful.
There are some companies that obviously can't, and we bear
the brunt of that, but we do work with our partners to make
sure that we fulfill the needs of this country and keep supply
chains moving.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you.
Mr. O'Brien. Thank you.
Senator Tuberville. Mr. Fain, the Biden administration's
prioritizing climate change, we all know that. We have seen it.
We felt the repercussions from it going to electric vehicles in
2027 and beyond. Two-thirds of the new vehicles on the road are
supposed to be EV.
Going through all those EPA regulations are out of sight.
So, what is your thoughts on the availability of the union jobs
and the push to EVs, and the automatic EV industry?
Mr. Fain. Thank you. I, look, we believe in a green
economy. We always have been. The UAW has always led the way
when it comes to environmental issues.
Senator Tuberville. Does it cut back on jobs? I keep
hearing that.
Mr. Fain. It doesn't have to. We, through this contract, we
didn't just only bargain for battery work. I think what it gets
lost is there is battery train workers, electric drive, motor
workers, e-motors, and housing, and covers.
We negotiated for all those things. But the other thing we
also did was we negotiated to bring the combustion engine work
back to some of our plants from Mexico and other areas. And so
we have to see the direction it goes.
But we are going to embrace this. We are going to run from
it. But our biggest concern to all of this is it needs to be a
just transition in this process where workers aren't left
behind.
Senator Tuberville. Is it true that we are building most of
our combustible engines South of the border now?
Mr. Fain. Some not most. I mean, we have in the big three,
I mean, we have several engine plants or transmission plants.
Some of that has ramped down due to this transition. But we
secured things in this contract to obviously to, like I said,
to bring work back and protect on both sides of this.
Senator Tuberville. Yes. Ms. Nelson, we all fly quite a
bit. But what is the biggest complaint from flight attendants?
And don't give me money. I am not talking about money. What is
the biggest complaint now, where we can get more qualified,
consistent flight attendants on flights?
Ms. Nelson. What is very difficult is that today it is
extremely combative in the cabin, and we have fewer staff than
we ever have. So, there is fewer flight attendants and
passengers----
Senator Tuberville. That is not going to get any better. We
have got to have people to break up these fights obviously.
Ms. Nelson. Yes, absolutely. And leadership to encourage
people to come together and understand that we can actually
safely get from one place to another without having a brawl is
very helpful.
Appreciate leaders around the country talking about unity
and talking about how we are better off when we work together
to ensure that safety and security come first. And that people
can come to work without being fearful of being a punching bag.
Senator Tuberville. Yes. I think we would all agree too. We
got to get more people back to work training. I came from the
education field, get more kids into technical training other
than going to 4 year school that are not getting anything out
of, to be able to get a job like most of you supply. So, thank
you for being here today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Nelson. Thank you.
The Chair. Thank you. And we are going to work on an
apprenticeship program. I think that is vitally important.
Senator Casey.
Senator Casey. Mr. Chairman, thanks for having this
hearing, you and the Ranking Member, and bringing in leaders to
talk about workers and corporate greed, but also the promise of
union organizing.
We are so grateful to be with these leaders. I wanted to
start with obviously a related issue, and that's what has been
termed greed-flation. And we just did a report about this last
week, when major corporations are taking advantage of consumers
by jacking up prices and blaming inflation just because they
can without any kind of scrutiny.
When they jack up those prices, they hurt a lot of
families. And that is what we are seeing all across the
country. Here is the reality. Just between 2020 and `21, just
between those few years, corporate profits rose 75 percent,
five times the rate of inflation. That is, I think, for so many
Americans, an abomination when corporate profits are exploding
by 75 percent, five times faster than inflation.
When I travel across Pennsylvania, I hear about this every
single day, whether it is people trying to pay their grocery
bill or other household or family expenses, and greed-flation
is impacting our families. This is documented. This isn't some
theory.
We can document and we do in the report. And if anything,
it has elevated the significance of unions and why union
organizing has never been more important to get just to give a
worker in his or her family a shot at being able to make ends
meet because they have the benefit of a union.
Unions like those that are represented here today are
critically important in this fight for workers, strengthening
workers' rights and protections, including the fundamental
right to organize, which, by the way, is under threat.
Anyone who thinks just because we had a legislation in
1935, the National Labor Relations Act, that everything is
Okay, every day of the week, that right is under threat across
the country. It is essential, that right to organize is
essential to building an economy that works for all Americans.
My first question is, President Fain, not just because you
have had a couple of successful months with your organizing,
but I will start with you. As you know from the deal, the
historic deal that you just negotiated securing wage gains for
auto workers, the big three are another example of this.
They have seen record profits and they have given their
CEOs millions in salaries and bonuses while fighting to deny
their workers' a raise and keep their car prices high. How has
corporate greed affected American car prices and worker wages?
Mr. Fain. [Technical problems]--several things. When you
talk about corporate profits exploding, I mean, the thing I
don't want to get lost here is that at the same time they were
exploding, worker pay was regressing, and conditions were
regressing.
I have had-- Mr. Higgins was talking about how increases in
pay will impact the economy and negatively. This goes back to
the fear mongering that takes place any time we bargain a good
contract.
The next scenario that gets put out there is that the world
is going to end because working class people make a livable
wage, and it is going to drive the price of vehicles up. But
when you talk about what has happened the last 4 years, there
is a sad irony to me. I didn't hear anything about this.
Over the last 4 years, the price of vehicles went up 30 to
35 percent over the last 4 years. It wasn't due to work or pay
going up. It wasn't due to our benefits changing. It was due to
one thing corporate greed and consumer price gouging. And that
is what has got to change in this country.
That is one thing I have learned throughout this process,
throughout this bargaining process and throughout my career
is--I have listened to analysts and people that write up ads
and things.
One thing I have learned is that most of these people have
no clue what the hell is even going on in the work we do. And
so they might be great professors, great pundits, but at the
end of the day, I have been at the bargaining table.
I have lived--I have been on the faculty working on the
shop floor, working class people matter. And when working class
people withhold their labor, nothing moves. And that is what
people need to realize in this country.
Billionaire class can build all the factories they want, if
workers refuse to withhold their labor, it will--they won't
build a thing. And so, that corporate greed and consumer price
gouging is all behind us.
Senator Casey. Mr. Chairman, can I just add something for
the record? If I could ask consent to submit for the record
this greed-flation report that we released last week.
The Chair. Without objection.
[The following information can be found on page 76 in
Additional Material:]
The Chair. Senator Cassidy.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cassidy. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few minutes
and so I am going to ask you to be brief. Mr. Fain, the
headline I just came across, Stellantis Offers Buyouts and
Early Retirement to 6,400 U.S. Nonunion Workers as The Auto
Industry Hits Turbulence.
Now, you don't know for sure, but after the very good
contract you were awarded they are now laying off 6,400 people.
It seems a little bit like a tube of toothpaste. If you squeeze
here, it is going to do something down there.
I think that would be something that Ms. Furchtgott Roth
would point out. Any thoughts on that? And again, be brief,
because I have other questions.
Mr. Fain. [Technical problems]--exactly, good question. I
think there is 15 billion reasons why----
The Chair. Yes, all right.
Mr. Fain. I am sorry?
The Chair. Talk into the mic, please.
Mr. Fain. I will give you 12 billion reasons why that
doesn't have to happen, Okay. When Stellantis took over, they
went on a price cutting on a labor cost cutting.
Senator Cassidy. No, but that was about a decade ago. So
BP----
Mr. Fain. No, no, no. Stellantis just took over within the
last 4 years. But when they took over, they went to--they want
to cut their way to profitability, but they do it on the backs
of workers, and they don't have to cut those jobs. They chose
to cut those jobs. Has nothing to do with our contract.
They made $12 billion in the first 6 months of this year
and are continuing to make billions as we went through the
bargaining process. So, again, to me, it is just--it is
shortsighted goals to recognize profits. And I have heard it
said over and over by leaders in the past, you can't cut your
way to profitability.
That is what--that is a shortsighted way of doing business,
and it is not sustainable for the long term, so.
Senator Cassidy. Okay. So, Mr. O'Brien, Yellow Trucking is
obviously going belly up, it appears. And they had come to the
Teamsters in June, I am just reading press reports, and asked
for some help.
It specifically mentioned you that we are not going to get
tough attitude is how the paper, the article put it, and now
they have gone belly up. There are reports that the Teamsters
came back in August to try and make things better, but by that
time it was too late.
Now, there it seems, again, going back to the witnesses,
Mr. Higgins and Ms. FGR, that this kind of approach brought a
company under and now we have a lot of Teamsters who are going
to be unemployed.
Mr. O'Brien. With all due respect, Dr. Cassidy that is
inaccurate on the yellow situation.
This yellow situation has been going on since 2009, where
our members have given back in concessions with the
recommendation of the union to try and save this company since
2009, $5 billion in wages and benefits. And this company was
awarded under the Trump administration a $700 million----
Senator Cassidy. Loan----
Mr. O'Brien. Loan, right. And the company has been
mismanaged. And they did not come to us in August. They came to
us early on. We tried to work with them and find solutions to
the problem.
All the while, after their initial meetings, they started--
and we found this after the fact. They started draining. They
told us they would be out of money by August, and that if we
didn't help them, then they would go under. All the while they
were taking their executive bonuses, the CEO pays and----
Senator Cassidy. But in the scheme of things----
Mr. O'Brien. They can blame anybody they want. That company
was mismanaged since 2009. There is facts and records to show
exactly what our members----
Senator Cassidy. I won't argue about the quality of their
management. It does seem, though, that as--when I read the
benefit packages that the drivers got, they would argue that
they could not afford that.
But that is their perspective. I am sorry, I just have
limited time. Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, I remember distinctly that
Mr. Fain had made comments that the rapid transition to all EV
vehicles was part of what was contributing to the loss of jobs.
I saw a cartoon, the green economy will create jobs,
unfortunately most of them are in China.
You commented as well on that in your testimony. In
response to Coach Tuberville, Mr. Fain kind of soft pedaled
that, but any thoughts on that? In effect, President Biden's
environmental policies have contributed to some of this loss of
jobs in the auto industry.
The Chair. Microphone.
Ms. Furchtgott Roth. Mr. Fain did say very clearly in April
of this year, shame on politicians for moving forward to 100
percent EVs because this is bad for our auto workers' jobs.
I was especially puzzled why during the negotiations he
didn't try to get these auto workers to drop their own self-
imposed goal of going all EV by 2035. And Mr. Fain has just
said that he has got some of the internal combustion engines to
move back from offshore, but they are not going to be able to
use them after 2035--at least they say they are not going to be
able to use them.
They say they are not going to use them. So why is that? It
is not under the law. So, he should be able to persuade them
that his members' jobs are more important, plus what Americans
want to buy, small businesses, farmers, they all need cars with
internal combustion engines.
Senator Cassidy. Mr. O'Brien, the--this is also the--this
the HELP Committee and the P stands for pensions. And it was
mentioned earlier, I think by Mr. Higgins, that the Central
States Pension Fund had received money to help bail out their,
I think, $36 billion or something like that, to bail out their
in arrears situation.
It is my understanding that the roster submitted by the
Central States Pension Fund had nearly 3,500 dead individuals
submitted to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Somebody
commented it is a little bit like the voting rolls in Chicago.
But as a result of this, the pension fund was awarded $127
million in additional bailout money. Now, is the pension fund
going to refund that to the American people?
Mr. O'Brien. I would assume it wouldn't. I assume the
Government would go after that if that is clearly what----
Senator Cassidy. I think this Administration has made the
decision that they are not going to. That is this kind of
administration, that decision. That is actually not kind of a
taxpayer type decision.
Mr. O'Brien. Look, I will go on record as saying if someone
was given something they weren't entitled to, they should
refund it.
Senator Cassidy. Sounds great. Can I quickly on Mr.
Higgins--Mr. Higgins, you mentioned the joint employer rule is
a boon to employees.
I think my understanding is if you got--if you have a
Subway and you have got seven employees, and four of them vote
to unionize, that young entrepreneur or that person of color
who has got their first business has to unionize, and of
course, with increased cost and hassle.
Any quick comment on that, because the Chair is being
indulgent, but still. Quick comments?
Mr. Higgins. Well, as far as the joint employer goes, it
doesn't directly impact unionization itself. But in terms of it
does--it sort of bleed back toward the corporate parent.
That is, I believe, the intent here. If you are organizing,
you have to organize, and the franchisees, you have to organize
them piecemeal by one by one. But if the franchisor is the--
considered the joint employer for all of its franchisees, then
you can simply direct your campaign at the franchise or a
corporation and it--and do it that way.
I believe that is the sort of underlying impetus.
The Chair. Senator Baldwin.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to begin
by recognizing the incredible leadership of the three union
leaders before us today, from winning historic gains at UPS and
the big three, to protecting airline workers during the COVID
pandemic. You have really served your members quite ably.
Despite these bright spots, it has been a tough year for
union workers in Wisconsin. President O'Brien, when you came
before this Committee earlier this year, I asked you about the
announced closures of two Energizer battery plants in
Wisconsin. These facilities in Fennimore and Portage were
formerly Rayovac facilities.
Rayovac was an iconic Wisconsin company. These workers
represented by the Teamsters, and by the way, I had a chance to
visit with some of them just a few weeks ago in Fennimore. When
Rayovac was acquired by Energizer in 2018, the Federal Trade
Commission shocked investors when it appeared to really
rubberstamp that merger with no conditions attached.
By the way, that same merger was treated very differently
by regulators in Europe. After the approval, consumers began
paying higher prices for batteries, not lower. And nearly 600
Wisconsin union members stand to lose their jobs as the company
moves those jobs to Singapore and North Carolina, both
facilities, without represented union labor.
I have urged the Federal Trade Commission to actually
retroactively review that merger approval. I have asked them on
two occasions, so far without any luck. Then in July in
Wisconsin, Master Lock announced that it would close its
Wisconsin plant, which has operated in downtown Milwaukee for
nearly 100 years.
Shortly after its parent company acquired a lock business
from a competitor, the company decided to move 400 jobs, 330 of
which are UAW members, to Mexico and to China. We have seen
this playbook in Wisconsin before, and so I am currently
working on legislation that would require the Federal Trade
Commission to consider the impact of mergers on workers, in
addition to the other considerations, because the workers are
the ones who bear the brunt of the ``efficiencies'' found after
a consolidation.
I am really tired of seeing our high wage union jobs in
Wisconsin go to nonunion states or abroad. These companies hire
consultants who see cutting union jobs as the way to increase
their margins, but I see it as cutting off your nose to spite
your face.
The truth is that unions provide the security and wages
necessary for workers to develop skills, expertise, and
institutional knowledge that are the bedrock of innovation and
growth. But too many in corporate America are not interested in
innovation or growth anymore.
Many large companies only want to look at the very short
term quarterly capitalism, extract value, cut wages, close
facilities, and increase buybacks all to enrich themselves and
their investors.
It is a big question with very little time left for the
three of you, but how can we change the culture of corporate
America to get these companies to see their union workforces as
an asset to be grown instead of a cost to be cut?
The Chair. Senator Baldwin is right. Very little time. Be
very brief with your answers, please.
Mr. Fain. Well first, I mean, when 26 billionaires have as
much wealth as half of humanity, we have a crisis in this
world. I don't see these things--with the Master Lock
situation, I don't see it as any effort of efficiencies.
I am going to call it what it is. It is corporate greed at
the expense of working class people. It is driving a race to
the bottom. We have to want better for this country. I don't
care what party someone is.
If you truly believe that paying someone poverty wages is
the pathway to a successful nation and a successful economy, I
don't know what you are smoking. So we have to have a just
transition initiative.
We have to look at workers' wages and benefits, and we have
got to stop the race to the bottom.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
Mr. O'Brien.
Mr. O'Brien. --[technical problems]--in that situation you
describe with Energizer, those jobs are gone. They are not
coming back.
Right now, you have 600 people that have had long term
careers there, who have raised families, put kids through
college, and were depending upon retiring out of there. They
are working under a severance agreement, so those jobs are
gone.
I think to sum it up quickly, we need more oversight over
these mergers to make sure that, first off, we keep these jobs
in America. But more importantly, we have got to mitigate any
type of damages or attacks on these workers for their ability
to join a union as well.
I mean, they are going to go to North Carolina, which is
right to work. And it is proven that the medium average wage in
right to work states are far less than the non-right to work
states. So, we have got to have more oversight on these mergers
and acquisitions.
Ms. Nelson. I agree with you completely on everything that
you said, Senator Baldwin. And we do need a better look at the
impact of mergers on workers.
In fact, actually, there has not really been a look at the
impact on workers in the Jet Blue, Spirit merger, which is
actually going to improve jobs and increase competition in the
airline industry, giving one more airline at the highest level,
competition with the others to drive those jobs to better
standards and also to give consumers better choice.
We need to have that. But we also need to have constraints
on stock buybacks, and we need to move away from this idea of
the quarterly earnings, because even the best CEOs that I have
worked with who have wanted to run a very good company have
been forced by the people who own the company--they are no
longer the decision makers.
They are driven to send more and more money to Wall Street
rather than investing in the company, investing in the workers,
and investing in what is going to be good for the consumers.
So, we have to remember that a rising tide lifts all boats, but
the working class is the tide, and that is what we have to
focus on.
The Chair. Thank you.
Senator Mullin.
Senator Mullin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to get a
little factual on what Mr. O'Brien just said about right to
work states versus forced to work states.
According to the compensation data report of the U.S.
Commerce Department, an average salary for private sector
employee in 2019 was $4,000 higher than the average employee in
forced union states, stating that right to work states pay
more.
Now, if we also want to break this down to statistics which
were quoted earlier by Mr. O'Brien about wage differences, if
you talk to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in nonunion jobs,
their average salaries raised 14.6 percent compared to 11
percent wage increase on unionized workers from 2020 to 2023.
If you go back to the percentage of union workers, because
if unions was working so well, then you would see an increase
in union jobs, not a decrease. 50 years ago, 33 percent of our
labor force was union.
Today, it is 10.1 percent. If you go back and you start
looking at wage earned, if you actually compare comparable
wages to ages, not a partisan point, but you go to all wages
earned, not just comparing 16 and over to 54 to 64 year old
ages, you will see that the actual average, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, that if you subtract the union
dues, it is actually higher nonunion employees are getting
paid, by roughly 1 or 2 percent, which is exactly what union
dues are, is 1 to 2 percent of their salary.
I just wanted to set the record straight on that. And that
is coming from statistics, all right. Now, let's talk about Mr.
O'Brien himself, his behavior. As everybody knows in this
hearing, the last time him and I kind of had a back and forth.
Appreciate your demeanor today. It is quite different. But
after you left here, you got pretty excited about the keyboard.
In fact, you tweeted at me, one, two, three, four, five times.
And let me read what the last one said, it said, ``Greedy CEO
who pretends like he is self-made.''
Sir, I wish you were in the truck with me when I was
building my plumbing company myself and my wife was running the
office, because I sure remember working pretty hard and long
hours.
``Pretends like he is self-made. What a clown. Fraud.
Always has been, always will be. Quit the tough guy act in
these Senate hearings. You know where to find me. Any place,
any time, cowboy.'' Sir, this is the time, this is a place. You
want to run your mouth. We can be two consenting adults. We can
finish it here.
Mr. O'Brien. Okay, that is fine. Perfect.
Senator Mullin. You want to do it now?
Mr. O'Brien. I would love to do it right now.
Senator Mullin. Well, stand your butt up, then.
Mr. O'Brien. You stand your butt up.
The Chair. Hold on--no, hold--stop it. No, no, sit down.
You are a United States Senator. Sit down, please. Hold it.
Hold it. If we can't--no, I have the mic. I am sorry.
Senator Mullin. This is what he said.
The Chair. Hold it. You will have your time.
Senator Mullin. Okay.
Mr. O'Brien. Can I respond?
The Chair. No, you can't. This is a hearing, and God knows
the American people have enough contempt for Congress. Let's
stop----
Senator Mullin. I don't like----
The Chair. You are--[Technical problems.]
Mr. O'Brien. I don't like you because you described
yourself.
The Chair. Hold it. Hold it. You have the mic. You have
time.
Senator Mullin. All right----
The Chair. Make your statement.
Senator Mullin. All right. Then let's do this, because I
did challenge you, and I accepted your challenge. And you went
quiet.
Mr. O'Brien. No, I didn't go quiet. I was--you challenged
me to a cage match, acting like a 12 year old----
The Chair. Excuse me. Hold it. No, excuse me----
Senator Mullin. I will say exactly----
The Chair. Senator Mullin, I have the mic. You have
questions on any economic issues, anything to say, go for it.
When I hear the talk about physical abuse----
Senator Mullin. You brought----
The Chair. We are not here to talk about physical abuse----
Senator Mullin. Let me--let me show you this hearing
because I want to expose this thug to who he is. And----
Mr. O'Brien. Do not point at me. That is disrespectful.
Senator Mullin. I don't care about respecting you at all--
--
Mr. O'Brien. I don't respect you at all.
Senator Mullin. Let me----
The Chair. Hold it, hold it. No. [Technical problems.]
Please, please----
Senator Mullin. Alright.
The Chair. This is a--excuse me----
Senator Mullin. Mm-hmm.
The Chair. This is a hearing to discuss economic issues,
alright?
Senator Mullin. I am quoting exactly what he said.
The Chair. You can say what you want.
Senator Mullin. This is your witness you have brought.
The Chair. This is my witness.
Senator Mullin. Let me--I am exposing him.
The Chair. You can expose anything you want--no fight----
Senator Mullin. In 2013--in 2013, O'Brien was suspended by
the Teamsters for intimidating your own members. In 2014, you
were part of what would you say, organizing the harassment,
intimidation of the Top Shelf crew----
Mr. O'Brien. Chef not shelf----
Senator Mullin. Oh, the Top Chef, Okay. And then and I
think in the reports it said, sexual, racist, and homophobic
slurs, and death threats, 14 tires were sliced, and 5 Teamsters
were arrested. And you said, well, I had nothing to do with it.
But however, in that same statement, you said, but if I get
called to testify, I will plead the fifth. This is what--this
is the witness you brought in here. In 2017, you were removed
as lead negotiator by then President Hoffa for UPS for your
actions.
Then at '22, when this guy was elected, what he said after
he got elected was he wanted to bring the mob mentality back to
the Teamsters. This is your guy.
The Chair. You are obviously going to give him a chance to
respond to your questions----
Senator Mullin. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because this is my
question, because you called me out, I didn't call you out.
Mr. O'Brien. Yes, you did.
Senator Mullin. You said any time, any place.
Mr. O'Brien. That is--let's get the record straight.
Senator Mullin. Okay, hold it--hold on----
The Chair. Hold it. Senator Mullin, do you have a question
for the witness.
Senator Mullin. Yes.
The Chair. Okay, let's hear it.
Senator Mullin. Any time, any place----
The Chair. No, that is not----
Senator Mullin. April is a charity event----
The Chair. No, that is not--that is not. No, no----
Senator Mullin. He, sir, he said it, and this is----
The Chair. He is here to--no----
Senator Mullin. [Technical problems]--on what questions can
or cannot be asked? Now, I will ask him----
The Chair. No, you are not--we are not going to be talking
about physical confrontation.
Senator Mullin. Oh, this is about charity. For a union
charity, because this the firefighters'----
The Chair. This is--you have a question on his--?
Senator Mullin. April----
Mr. O'Brien. Grow up----[Technical problems.]
The Chair. Do you have a question on his--let's not be----
Senator Mullin. You said it.
Mr. O'Brien. You are an embarrassment. You are an
embarrassment.
Senator Mullin. I am just simply answering it.
[Technical problems.]
The Chair. Hold it, hold it.
Mr. O'Brien. You reach out to me, buddy.
The Chair. Hold it. Senator Mullin, you made some charges.
Senator Mullin. Charges?
The Chair. Mr. O'Brien, do you want to respond to his
questions?
Senator Mullin. Yes, go ahead, please.
Mr. O'Brien. Yes, I mean, look, the reality of it is----
Senator Mullin. Accept my challenge----
Mr. O'Brien. Mr. Mulling--tough guy.
The Chair. Answer--hold it. Answer the questions. Please.
Mr. O'Brien. One--in fact, he made a lot of statements,
right. And his statements are fiction, at best.
Senator Mullin. Fiction? I read them.
Mr. O'Brien. [Mocking noises]--what?
The Chair. Answer the question, please.
Mr. O'Brien. I can't understand him, to be honest with you.
The Chair. All right.
Mr. O'Brien. He rambles so much. What was your question,
actually?
Senator Mullin. Oh, you said I made a lot of statements.
Mr. O'Brien. No, but what is your question? I don't
understand the question. Could you repeat it?
Senator Mullin. You said any time, any place.
Mr. O'Brien. What's your question?
Senator Mullin. Accept the challenge.
Mr. O'Brien. What challenge?
Senator Mullin. You said, any time, any place. I am
accepting yours, so why don't you come back----
Mr. O'Brien. What challenge? What challenge are you talking
about?
Senator Mullin. April 30th. How about we do it for charity
at the Smoking Guns in Tulsa, Oklahoma?
The Chair. No, we are not going to be talking about
physical confrontations here.
Mr. O'Brien. You want to fight me?
Senator Mullin. What do you say by any time, any place?
Mr. O'Brien. Let's have coffee, discuss our differences.
Senator Mullin. Oh, that is what you said.
Mr. O'Brien. That is right. Exactly.
Senator Mullin. All right, well, let's--have coffee.
Mr. O'Brien. Let's do it.
Senator Mullin. I would love to.
Mr. O'Brien. I would love to----
Senator Mullin. It is funny how you are backing out of----
Mr. O'Brien. I don't back on anything.
Senator Mullin. You did.
Mr. O'Brien. You are the one. You are 100--should be the
most influential people in this country making changes. You are
focused on--you are focused on a debate that is not relevant.
Senator Mullin. You keep texting me----
Mr. O'Brien. You are an embarrassment----
[Technical problems.]
The Chair. This hearing is about the condition of the
working class in America. That is why we are----
Senator Mullin [continuing]. A thug----
Mr. O'Brien. You are the biggest thug here.
Senator Mullin. You brought him here.
The Chair. All right----
Mr. O'Brien. You are the biggest thug. Even your colleagues
call you a----
The Chair. [Technical problems] I don't know why you do
what you are doing.
Senator Hassan.
Senator Hassan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair----
The Chair. Senator Hassan----
Senator Hassan. Senator Mullin, please yield. I have been
recognized by the Chair.
Mr. O'Brien. Back to the corner.
Senator Hassan. All right, now----
The Chair. The floor is yours.
Senator Hassan. Chairman Sanders, I want to thank you for
this hearing. I want to thank Ranking Member Cassidy, too, for
participating in it.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today.
It is really a great time to be able to be with all of you and
to be here with union leaders to discuss the important role
that unions play in improving the lives of working families in
New Hampshire and all across the country. I have three
questions.
I would like to get through all three. I want to start with
you, Mr. Fain. You talked in your opening remarks about the
historic gains that the United Auto Workers have recently
achieved. And I understand, and you mentioned, that soon after
the agreements were announced, other automakers have boosted
their employees' hourly wages and benefits.
Can you just talk a little bit, and try to keep it to 30
seconds to a minute, about how union successes lead to improved
conditions for all workers?
Mr. Fain. Yes. Thank you for that. I think this goes back
to Mr. Mullin's previous comment about talking--I think he
was--I respectfully disagree with his comment about that--in
right to work states, workers make more money. And I think this
is a prime example. We bargain our greatest contract in our
history, the richest contract in our history, where it will
change lives.
We set that standard. And immediately you saw Toyota,
Honda, and now Hyundai changing their conditions, raising pay
for their workers ,and shortening the progression to get the
full pay from 8 years to 4 years, from 6 years to 3 years. And
we did the same thing from 8 years to 3 years.
Obviously that is a direct result of the impact of what we
bargained for. And I think it even goes a step further. I think
during the COVID pandemic, I think people had to really reflect
on what is important in life. And it is not working 7 days a
week, 12 and 16 hours a day, working multiple jobs.
People want some semblance of a life, and they shouldn't
have to work that much to make a living. That is what we should
focus on in this country. And I think people see that and
people want to be a part of that.
Senator Hassan. Right. People should be able to know what
their hours are, work hard during those hours, but then go to
their kid's little league games and take care of their elderly
parents, and shovel their neighbors' walkway.
Mr. Fain. Life--work, life balance issue. That is--we talk
a lot about that, yes.
Senator Hassan. Yes. Thank you very much. Mr. O'Brien,
workers' safety should be a priority for all businesses, yet
unions still have to fight for basic worker protections. Our
Country saw some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded this
summer.
Many cities experienced extended periods well over 100
degrees. This puts employees working outdoors at serious health
risk if temperature controlled areas or adequate break times
aren't provided.
However, during this same period, the Teamsters had to
fight to secure air conditioning in delivery trucks during
their negotiations with UPS. Mr. O'Brien, beyond the health and
safety implications, how does lack of access to basic
protections impact worker morale and worker productivity?
Mr. O'Brien. Well, I think it is, the best example is what
is happening at Amazon right now. You have a--have a company
that has the most OSHA violations, that have to deal with
egress issues over heat conditions where people are passing
out, some are dying on the jobs.
That is the beauty of having a collective bargaining
agreement that we have with UPS. There are mandates and plans
in place to put air conditioning in the vehicles, make sure
that the buildings that they are working in the warehouses are
properly ventilated, make certain that we have safety
committees that are part of the collective bargaining
agreement--that mandate and monitor, and UPS is a fine example
where we have the least amount of OSHA reportable accidents
because we do have those checks and balances in place that
protect our workers. It is not just a union versus nonunion
issue.
We think that everybody--we set the standard in this last
agreement where we think every employer should adopt the
policies and procedures that we were able to negotiate in this
industry.
Senator Hassan. Right. And it improves worker morale if
they know that they will have a--they will be safe in the
workplace and that their health will be considered.
Mr. O'Brien. Well, I think if you go to a workplace that is
going to protect you and be safe, then you can have a long term
career there where your employer actually does care about you.
Senator Hassan. Right. One more question for you, Mr. Fain.
Investments in workers and their families pay off for
businesses. Businesses that provide paid family and medical
leave, for instance, are able to better attract people to the
workforce and reduce turnover, which saves them time and money.
Mr. Fain, some paid leave benefits were included in the
contracts that your recent--that your union recently
negotiated. How will workers access to guaranteed paid leave
impact the stability and success of the companies that they
work for?
Mr. O'Brien. Well, we made--we got a lot of flak a lot of
laughed at, mocked for some of the demands we put on the table,
the 32 hour workweek being one of them.
All this gets back to us having work, life balance. And
paid leave was a big issue. In the birth of a child or adoption
or certain situations like that people need time to adjust to
that. And that is something we don't talk about a lot publicly
now.
But these are all work, life balance issues. To me, it goes
back to mental health issues. Also, when people are working
themselves to death 7 days a week, when they are working
multiple jobs, scraping to get by paycheck to paycheck, this
affects the mental health of our society, and I think that is
why we see such an increase.
We have an obligation to give people adequate time to do
those things. I mean, when you have a child, it is one of the
greatest moments. I have two daughters. I mean, literally when
both my daughters were born, I cried for a half hour. I mean,
it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Senator Hassan. Yes.
Mr. Fain. I had to take vacation to spend time. But so I
think it is a great benefit, and management does that--
management already had that benefit. It was just basically
giving our workers the right that the managers of the plant
enjoy.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chair. Senator Braun.
Senator Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have had these
discussions before. I come from the world of full competition,
transparency the things that classic markets are made of and
engage consumer.
In so many instances, that is not the case anymore. You
have got huge mega corporations, many of them multinationals.
And we have had this discussion. I know Mr. O'Brien and I have
had that, that is where you have got to have some
counterweight. You have got to have a voice for employees.
When I hear stories of a CEO in a public company making 100
times the wage of the average employee, yes and thumbs went up
to even more, I am going to say a figure much lower than that
would not be the case in almost all small businesses, any
business that is being held in check by true markets.
I come from a place where you are lucky to grow up in a
community where you couldn't tell the difference between blue
and white collar. Many of my employees were blue collar folks
that ended up working their way up into management.
But I made this statement too. If you pay good wages and
good benefits, you guys are probably not even needed because
employees would choose probably not to even go there. Where I
want to go is when it comes to the small business owner, most
of whom make a living out of that small business.
To me, it is harder than just working for someone. It is in
that same category, though. Your family is living off of it and
you got to have a living wage, or you have to have a return on
that business. And when it comes to union efforts that may be
focused on the gig economy, small business, franchisees, which
is where a lot of people get their start, almost none of them
want any help.
Do you feel, and I would like to start with Mr. Fain, Mr.
O'Brien, and Ms. Nelson, is your opinion that is not the
bailiwick of what you are interested in? Isn't there plenty to
do where you have that disproportionate difference between
employ and huge public companies that have a different
characteristic from what I am describing?
Does that mean you should lay off of that area and focus on
where the need is most? Mr. Fain, would you start?
Mr. Fain. Thank you, Senator Braun. I think when you talk
about competition, I understand. I just, competition to me, is
a code for a race to the bottom and always has been because we
simply find the lowest bidder.
But in what you are talking about with pay and benefits, I
understand how that is being framed. But there is one thing
that you didn't talk about, and that to me is why unions are
really imperative, and that is a voice.
It gets lost in the shuffle a lot of times. But when you
are an employee at will, you can be fired for any reason or no
reason at all. That can't happen with a union. And so you can
have an opinion. You can have a grievance. And you can raise
those grievances.
Senator Braun. But do you think that is applicable at the
level of small business in places that are there, scrapping at
the lower end of the economy where they want that autonomy, and
where in my observation, they generally are paying their
employees more than they are making anyway.
I am not disputing. I am acknowledging that there is a
place against super mega-corporations. But then I look at the
PRO Act, which has got features where it looks like it tries to
get into an area where I don't think there is a need. Give a
brief response to that, and then I want to hear the other two.
Mr. Fain. Small businesses, I don't like to take--my
daughter as a dental hygienist. I mean, and I have seen one
cut--one dental firm she worked for that kept cutting her wage,
cutting her pay and, they have no repercussions.
They can either quit and go somewhere else or just deal
with it. And so I do believe that there are things that apply
in small business as much as it does larger corporations.
Naturally, larger corporations have very different
circumstances.
But I think people still need those protections. People
work for dignity, and every job deserves to have dignity----
Senator Braun. Before I run out of time, Mr. O'Brien.
Mr. O'Brien. Yes. So, I just want to give you a brief
history. I come out of rank and file small business, and we
negotiate with big corporations nationwide on behalf of 1.3
million members.
We negotiate on small white papers, small businesses. And
to your point, there is a difference between both. The one goal
that we always look to achieve is to negotiate a contract,
especially on the small business side of the smaller employers,
that is obviously sustainable for them, but also rewarding for
our members.
When you are going into these negotiations--and I come out
of a family owned business where I worked for a great family
that were just as hungry to be successful as we were, and they
work just as hard.
Those are the people we don't want to hurt. Those are the
people who we want to try and help. And we have helped, and we
continue to help.
Senator Braun. Thank you for that distinction.
Ms. Nelson.
Ms. Nelson. Yes. Thank you so much for the question,
because, of course, we do need to put the check on this massive
chasm between those who are in the corporate class and those
who are in the working class.
But in those situations, what the PRO Act is trying to do
is to make sure that every single person in this country has
the right to join a union. In many of these small businesses,
sometimes the reasons that people are choosing to unionize has
to do with sexual harassment, safety in the workplace.
Having that voice, like President Fain said, is critically
important. And where people are running a good business and
they have that dialog with their employees already, that may
not be happening.
But the right for anyone to join a union and create that in
the workplace, and actually create a better situation for those
employers who may not be getting those issues to their desk--
they may not be hearing about the issues of sexual harassment
and bullying in the workplace, but through the union there is
that protection to bring that forward, deal with those issues,
and oftentimes resolve that and keep that out of litigation,
which is going to be helpful to those businesses, too. So, I
just give you one other reason why it can be very advantageous.
Senator Braun. Thank you.
The Chair. Thank you.
Senator Smith.
Senator Smith. Thank you very much. Thank you to all of
you.
I really appreciate what you just said, Ms. Nelson. I think
that really captures a lot of what is happening here. So last
month, I went to Hudson, Wisconsin, the home of Senator
Baldwin, to walk the picket line with Local 722 of the United
Auto Workers while they are on strike.
About half of those workers in Hudson are from Minnesota.
And, I won't forget I talked to one of your members, Mr. Fain,
who told me as he was there how worried he was that the big
three CEOs were just going to wait him out--just hunker down
and wait them out. But then he said it is scary, but sometimes
you have to stand up for what you believe in, for what you know
is right.
It is not right that these companies are making billions of
dollars in profit while the people whose labor is producing
that profit can't even afford to buy one of the cars that they
make.
It seems to me that what hurts our economy is the
concentrations of power and wealth. That means that only a
handful of people are doing well, while regular middle class
people are struggling to pay for childcare and maybe buy a
house or take a vacation, which is something that everybody
wants to do.
For me, these fights are about taking on this imbalance in
power that exists in our economy. And so, my question to all
three of you is why do you think that your members and your
unions were ready to take on this fight right now? Why is this
the moment?
For years, Americans have been dealing with this imbalance
of power and struggling, watching the rich get richer while
everybody else is just trying to figure out how to hold it
together. Why do you think this has been the moment?
Mr. Fain. Thank you. It is a great question. And as one
thing I want to I guess elaborate more deeply on contrary to
the thug label that some people like to put on us, I want to be
clear about this, we want businesses to succeed.
Senator Smith. Right.
Mr. Fain. It does us no good to kill a business that
doesn't do our members any good. It doesn't do--it doesn't do
it for jobs. We want business to succeed, but it can't--we are
not going to let it succeed at the expense of the worker.
That is the problem globally and in this country, is there
is such a giant chasm between rich and working class now, and
it has got to change. So we, I think our members, everything we
have done resonated well with them this time, just from the
fact that not just UAW members, not just union members, working
class people in this country, in this world are fed up.
They are fed up with falling further and further behind,
scraping to get by. And the dollar is not going anywhere as far
as it used to go. And conditions just keep getting worse. So, I
think we ran a contract campaign to get our members engaged on
the issues and to make sure everyone understood what the battle
was, and we were very transparent with our communication
throughout this process, something I think our leadership
hasn't done in the past.
We gave weekly updates to the membership and not just the
membership, the whole world.
Senator Smith. It seems to me you were really building a
strong collaboration with your members. This wasn't a--I mean,
this was not a top down kind of a thing. It was a grassroots
sort of thing.
Mr. Fain. It is a member driven----
Senator Smith. Right.
Mr. Fain. The one thing we wanted to change--when I took
over as President was I wanted this to be a member driven
union, not a top down oligarchy, where I just bark orders and
beg people to follow. The members are who run this union now,
and that is how a union should be.
Senator Smith. Would Mr. O'Brien and Ms. Nelson like to--
you are in a different, slightly different place, Ms. Nelson,
but why do you think this moment is sort of the moment that is
galvanizing this organizing and this change?
Mr. O'Brien. Well, I think speaking for the Teamsters
Union, we represent 1.3 million members that are airline pilots
to zookeepers and everything in between. So, we have a very
diverse membership.
The one thing that I think has promoted organizing and
promoted a thirst to be represented is during the pandemic, the
majority of my members were all deemed essential workers.
They were providing goods and services to this country,
whether it was delivering parcels, whether it was making sure
that food was distributed out of warehouses and delivered by
trucks, making sure rubbish was picked up, making sure that the
hospitals or everything else was clean.
Senator Smith. They were making sure everything held
together.
Mr. O'Brien. I think in light of all the essential services
our members provided, the one thing that was clear with all
CEOs and with corporations where they were thriving during the
pandemic. Their bottom line on their balance sheet kept
expanding, and expanding, expanding.
I think our members obviously not naive to the fact on how
much these corporations are making--
Senator Smith. They can see it.
Mr. O'Brien. [continuing].--Wanted to be rewarded for their
hard work, rewarded for putting their lives in jeopardy.
Some lost their lives, putting their families in jeopardy,
sacrificing time at home to make sure that we provide a supply
chain and essential goods and services to this country. So, I
think that is one of the reasons why there is such an appetite
and thirst to take a piece of that pie, so to speak.
Senator Smith. Ms. Nelson, really quickly, before Chair
Sanders gavels us both. Why do you think this is the moment for
flight attendants and the people that you represent?
Ms. Nelson. Yes. Flight attendants often are the tip of the
spear of anything happening socially or politically in this
country.
What we saw was people coming on to our planes before the
pandemic and walking through first class where the bigger seats
are, and then walking to the next set of economy seats that
maybe have more room.
As they get further and further back, their knees are up at
their chin and there is no room for their back. You might be
lucky if you get to sit your way around in the plane. So, we
saw that the entire American public was really experiencing
this very shared experience across industries about the way
that the productivity had been moved to Wall Street, that more
and more of people's time was being taken from them, that they
can't make ends meet, that they can't travel to their place of
work.
Then the pandemic came. And what they saw was that workers
on the front lines were not only seen as a line item, they were
seen as disposable. And this next generation hears that Social
Security is going to be taken away from them. Any sort of
protections are going to be taken away from them.
We are not making good on our promises. People are
understanding that they can't--that the only way that they can
fight back. The only way that they can fight for the American
dream is to join together in unions and take that power and
take it right to where the decision makers are, which is at the
corporations who are controlling our politics because money is
controlling our politics. Now, that's why we are where we are.
Senator Smith. Thank you very much.
The Chair. Thank you.
Senator Hickenlooper.
Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Ranking
Member. I appreciate the hearing, the opportunity to hear both
sides of the argument.
I want to say, Ms. Nelson, in case I don't get back to,
when I was Governor, I think one of the reasons we were
successful--I hired a woman named Ellen Golombek, who came in
as the head--my Secretary of Labor, and she had been a flight
attendant and organized flight attendants.
Her impact on the other leadership of our state was
profound. In other words, she had a different way of resolving
differences. And I have utmost respect for Mr. O'Brien, Mr.
Fain, but I do think that sometimes having more women in
organized labor is beneficial.
Ms. Nelson. We de-escalate and we lead. We don't challenge
to cage matches. That is exactly right.
Senator Hickenlooper. Now, now, now.
[Laughter.]
Senator Hickenlooper. Let me--Mr. Fain, let me start with
you. The Economic Policy Institute found that as union
membership has declined, there has been a corresponding rise in
income inequality.
Since the announcement of UAW tentative agreement with the
big three, Toyota, Honda have all--Toyota, Honda, and others
have subsequently announced wage increases for their workers.
Union advocates have always, of course, advocate for their
members, but that has been made a couple of times already
today, that this is a benefit that non-unionized workforces
receive as well.
In addition to the wage increases, what are some of the
other benefits that you expect to see for non-unionized workers
following the recent tentative agreement? Did I make myself
clear?
Mr. Fain. Well, I mean, wage increases are one thing, but I
mean, obviously, there is a lot of things we bargained for. I
mean, health and safety standards. You look at with the EV
industry alone, there are chemicals that aren't regulated yet
that we know we are still working on.
When you have a union involved in that, there is a means
for--we have safety committees that actually work on those
things. So, safety is always a big issue. Work, life balance
issues, just as we talked about, paid leave for employees with
a birth or adoption of a child.
I mean there is several things, but we go on and on about--
but it really comes down to I think, when you look at the wage
bump right away that, what we call the UAW bump, I mean, I
think it is just predominantly people go to work to try to
sustain a living.
I think we focus a lot on the wages, and I think it gets a
lot of focus. I think that is the immediate concern of these
three companies, Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai right away was to
raise wages because it is the quickest thing that is visible
that will hopefully, in their opinion, discourage members from
wanting to become part of a union, but----
Senator Hickenlooper. Absolutely, no, I couldn't agree
more. And I think that bump is profound for so many people's
lives, and we have heard about that from a different--a number
of different speakers.
The electrification and that transition to decarbonize the
transportation economy, this is a global trend. And we have had
witnesses speak on these hearings before. They talk about once
people drive an electric vehicle, they don't want to go back,
and this is going to be driven by consumers.
Now, issues around cost certainly are relevant. The--in any
new transition to a new economy, usually there are price
differentials that we try to smooth over. As we transition to
electric vehicles, unions are importantly negotiating deals
that help balance the emerging technologies with job retention.
Obviously there is going to be some efficiencies here. Your
tentative agreement included new commitments to ensure existing
manufacturing plant workers can transition into the electric
workforce.
Can you talk a little bit about how you approached
negotiating that tentative deal of balancing the EV goals--I
mean, climate change is real. I am not sure that we have had
too many witnesses here that don't believe it is a real issue.
Figuring out how to get to a decarbonized economy is going
to be critical. How do you look at protecting the workers'
rights as we make that transition?
Mr. Fain. Yes. I mean, our main concern going into this was
the fact that we knew--[technical problems]--yes, our main
concern going into this was we knew that this was on the
horizon, and it was coming fast. So naturally, we talked about
it a lot, a just transition.
We, no matter how this goes, no matter what the timing is
on it, we want to make sure--and in just in the UAW alone, in
the big three, 20 percent of the workforce is in powertrain
work, which is making engines, transmissions that drive the
vehicles. If that work does taper off naturally and batteries
take that place and drive motors and things like that, we want
to get a big piece of that.
That there is a transition where workers aren't left
behind. So, we bargained for language to give our members flow
rates into those jobs in the event that is happening.
That is how--to me, that is what a just transition is. It
is not leaving people behind, but also new people that hire
into those plants, that they won't work for poverty wages,
which was the case in Baltimore--when I was elected President.
We changed that now.
Senator Hickenlooper. I couldn't agree more. And I think
that is going to be a big challenge for everybody, for both
sides of every issue, for Republicans and Democrats, to figure
out, as we do go through this great transition, which is real,
and most of us think it has to happen, how do we do that in
such a way that the friction and the turbulence of the loss is
minimized for the people that do the work.
Mr. Fain. Yes.
Senator Hickenlooper. Anyway, thank you. I got to go
preside, so I yield back to floor. Sorry to run off.
The Chair. Senator Markey.
Senator Markey. Thank you, Senator Sanders. Thank you,
President Fain, for your work increasing the benefits for UAW
workers at Ford, GM, and Stellantis. And I am sure that there
is going to be a bouquet for you from the Honda and Toyota
workers as well.
Thank you, Mr. O'Brien, for your work increasing the
benefits for UPS workers. Thank you, Ms. Nelson, for your work
in making sure that airline workers got the protections they
needed in the pandemic.
Thank you for trying to organize the Delta flight
attendants right now. Thank you, because the benefits will flow
throughout our society. So, these are big fights, big wins.
Unions are taking big swings at corporate greed--and disgusting
union busting that cripple the working class.
My father, who was a union vice President, always said, you
can't beg for your rights, you have got to take them. That is
what you are doing. Workers across the country, from warehouses
to schoolhouses, and hospital hallways, to the halls of
Congress, are organizing, unionizing, and striking.
They are demanding better and taking back their rights. But
the fights are far from over. As corporate greed runs rampant,
we in Congress can't rest until these wins reach every worker
in our Country.
Right now, Mr. O'Brien, Amazon forces workers to use
scanners and devices to track their every move. Every box
lifted, every delivery completed, every restroom break taken is
accounted for by an algorithm and artificial intelligence. If
these workers don't meet corporate quotas, they risk losing
their jobs.
Faced with the choice of feeding their family or breaking
their own back to meet these quotas, some workers end up with
life altering injuries. In short, smart tech turns sinister
when big corporations use it to turn warehouses into Big
Brother. So, what do we need to do, Mr. O'Brien, to break this
trend that Amazon is leading?
Mr. O'Brien. Right. Well, to break this well, this trend
that Amazon is leading, I think we will take a look at what we
achieved during the UPS agreement because we do the same exact
work. And look, I apologize for not acquiescing to the cage
fight in November. I was in--I mean, April. I was in----
The Chair. Don't worry about cage fighting----
Mr. O'Brien. No, I am just telling you, I was in a cage
fight with UPS, one of the largest corporations, so I really
couldn't entertain at that point. But what we did was we
negotiated strip protections, and we know that the parcel
delivery business is--and look, guilty as charged. We hit that
send button on our computer.
We want our packages 2 days prior, right. And there are
standards that are put in these companies that--productivity
standards that are not attainable. And what we are able to do
at UPS, protect against such unattainable productivity
standards, make sure we protect the members, but more
importantly, provide a quality of workforce that is going to be
sustainable. And we did that through protections in our
collective bargaining agreement.
At Amazon, you are 100 percent correct. Those workers at
Amazon are held hostage by technology. They held hostage and
held to a higher standard that is not achievable. And when the
company decides you are no longer worth it, they just throw you
out and recycle someone new in there.
That is why there is 150 percent turnover ratio. That is
why they have the most injuries per OSHA. And that is why they
need to be organized and protected under a collective
bargaining agreement.
Senator Markey. Ms. Nelson, the theme of today's hearing is
a rising tide lifts all boats, but we can say a rising tide
lifts all planes as well. Earlier this year, I reintroduce my
Good Jobs for Good Airports bill, which would provide airport
service workers, baggage handlers, wheelchair attendants,
airport restaurant workers with a living wage.
These workers play an essential role in making our aviation
system run smoothly. By paying airport service workers. And the
SEIU is trying to organize them fair wages and benefits we
reduce turnover, retain experienced staff, and make our entire
aviation system safer.
Can you speak to how the flight attendants and the CWA's
work unionizing and representing flight attendants benefits all
workers that keep our aviation system working?
Ms. Nelson. Senator Markey, you and I go back a long time,
and it was just after 9-11 when you came directly to the crisis
room and grieved with us and said that you would stick with us
to make sure that aviation was secure.
We did several things together, 100 percent screening of
cargo. You also were instrumental in making sure that the
airport screeners who were going to the lowest bidder at--
working for the airlines at that time. I remember these people.
We saw them at all hours of the day.
They had to be there all hours of the day to provide for
their families. And when we Federalized that workforce and when
Congress changed to the pay and benefits of that Federalized
workforce this year, to put that on the general schedule so
that we can attract security workers to those jobs, then TSA
was actually able to attract people. We were able to maintain
that security.
That same--that same formula needs to be put in place for
all of the workers at the airport. Every single person, from
the concession workers to the people who push the wheelchairs.
We cannot take those planes off the ground if people are
not getting fed properly. We have more people getting angry on
the planes. We have medical emergencies on the plane, if they
can't get the food.
We need to be able to take care of our disability community
and make sure that aviation is open to everyone. When you have
workers who can't make a living wage and are actually sleeping
in the gate areas because they are working around the clock,
shifts around the clock, and sometimes different jobs at that
airport, that makes all of us less safe.
They also cannot live near those airports because they are
usually in major metropolitan areas and they are having to take
transportation sometimes 3 hours back and forth, so they don't
even have time to go home between those shifts.
We have got to raise the standard for all of the workers.
It is about safety, it is about security, and it is about basic
dignity at work. We support you 100 percent. Thank you for
always sticking with us and we are with you.
Senator Markey. My time is up, but I was also going to
compliment you, Mr. Fain, for working to organize the electric
vehicle battery plants in our Country. We have to make the
transition to those being union workers all across the country.
Thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chair. Thank you, Senator Markey. We are going to wrap
it up. Senator Mullin wants to say a few words. Then I will say
a few words.
Senator Mullin. Well, I am going to leave the last
statement for Mr. O'Brien completely alone and move on. If you
do want to really have that cup of coffee, reach out. We will
sit down and talk about it.
Now, my differences with Mr. O'Brien has nothing to do with
unions--zero. I have no problem with unions. I have problems
with unions forcing people to join unions. But there is a place
for them. And those that choose to join a union, join it. I
have no issues with that. Mr. Fain, I enjoyed your behavior and
honestly your comments.
Ms. Nelson, enjoy the fight, really do. And I want to make
it very clear for people that want to join the union, that is
fine. I believe in right to work states and let the employer
and employee make the best decision what is best for their
company, and that is it.
At the end of day, no company survives without employees,
and no employees are hired without the company. It takes both
in the same boat, we are on the same direction, to be
successful.
I am only moderately successful because I was fortunate
enough to have great employees that worked for me for a long
time, and I was able to build a company with them. At the same
time, they were actually able to live a very successful life
too. So, appreciate the time, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the
witnesses that came in. Thank you.
The Chair. Thank you. Senator Lujan just walked in.
Senator Lujan.
Senator Lujan. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And thank
you to all of our witnesses for being here today. It is good to
see you. I am going to catch my breath real quick. I apologize
for just running up this way.
First off, Ms. Nelson, I want to say thank you for raising
Al in your testimony, who is a retired police officer from New
Mexico who the country lost, who his family lost on September
11th, on flight 175.
I want to thank you for not just keeping his memory alive,
but everyone else who we lost that day. Thank you. Now, Mr.
Chairman, I am the proud son of an ironworker. My mom retired
after 33 years from local public schools. My brother is IBEW.
My grandfather, my mom's dad was a union carpenter.
The turmoil that we saw, Mr. Chairman, was usually around
holidays, and it was whether ironworkers or carpenters were
stronger. My brother was of a younger generation, so he didn't
get to insert himself into that specific conversation.
I had a roof over my head because people looked out for
each other, because they got to stick by each other. And the
family would often remark that they wish unions weren't needed.
Think about why they came together decades ago and people not
getting treated fairly.
People are getting taken advantage of. And whether it was
decades ago or it was this morning, I have learned there is
power in numbers. If you lean on each other, if you count on
each other, you can usually get through something.
It is the same thing where if a neighbor of mine has a
challenge, there is a hole in the roof or something, then every
one of us that has a tool or the capability, or a pair of hands
or one hand or two, whatever it may be that can get there and
repair that, we do it together as a family.
But you lean on each other. You help each other in good
times and in bad. And my dad often reminded me when he also
picketed outside of Los Alamos National Laboratory with his
local because he was concerned of unfair working conditions.
Now, the irony of all of that, Mr. Chairman, is my dad died
from lung cancer because of exposure on the job. Because
decades ago, they didn't have the technology necessary to give
a damn about keeping people alive, or what they were breathing
in every day.
Because they made a few extra bucks by not having the
respiratory equipment that was needed, so they just let people
get sick and die of cancer. Unions came together and said, that
is not right.
They started fighting for more safety gear, more safety
apparatus so that when someone worked a full shift, whether it
was a morning shift, an afternoon shift, swing or graveyard,
they could get back to their family home that night, and maybe
on Sunday go to services together, or catch a ballgame
together, or maybe a barbecue if they were able to.
Thank you for what you do because heaven knows that laws
that Congress passed aren't strong enough to keep people alive
and keep people safe. Because the laws that Congress passes
create loopholes that allow folks, once it gets to a
rulemaking, to create all the darned loopholes that exist so
that people like my dad can't be here today, and he had a lot
of living left in him--a lot of living left in him.
I miss my dad every day. I still argue with him on occasion
when I am out in the field and I am working on his old 1972
Ford, because I can't get it to work the way that he did. But
by the end of it, once it gets started, I apologize, and I ask
for his forgiveness, and he sends it down because the tractor
keeps running.
It doesn't shut down on me. That is the relationship I had
with my dad. Now, Mr. Chairman, I have many questions here
surrounding the concerns that I saw with the inequities with
pay and what has happened to working families across the
country.
I am going to submit these into the record and ask for
these to be addressed. I am sorry that I got emotional today.
Dad must be on the brain. Dad is always in my heart.
But just, thank you all for being here and hope that we can
find a way forward to make sure that families are able to get
to work, but also get to their families at the end of their
shift. I yield back.
The Chair. Well, thank you very much, Senator Lujan, for
expressing not only about your family, I think, for millions of
families in this country. And I want to thank all of the
panelists which we had. Thank all of you.
Look, what we are dealing with today, and Senator Lujan
made this point and others have made the point, is some people
have extraordinary wealth and extraordinary power. And the
people on top have never, ever done better in the history of
America.
More income and wealth inequality than we have ever had.
More concentration of ownership. And what we have heard today
is what is happening to ordinary people, how are they doing
economically?
Well, in many cases, falling further behind, can't afford
rent, can't afford food. Corporate profits are soaring. Can't
afford to send their kids to childcare. So how do we deal with
that issue when so few have so much power and so many are
powerless? And the answer is what I think we have heard today.
The only way anybody has ever made success is when people
come together. You can't do it alone. No worker is going to
take on General Motors or Stellantis alone--they are not going
to take on UPS, they are not going to take on United Airlines.
People have got to stand together. And when people stand
together, they succeed. And we are seeing that now. And I think
we are going to see more of that in the years to come.
I want to thank all of our panelists, but obviously, for
me, I want to thank our union leaders and workers all over this
country who are demanding justice not only for themselves and
their unions, but for everybody.
With that, this is the end of the hearing. For any Senators
who wish to ask additional questions, questions for the record
will be due in 10 business days, on November 29th. I ask
unanimous consent to enter into the record any statement from
stakeholder groups.
[The following information can be found on page 92 in
Additional Material:]
The Chair. The Committee stands adjourned.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
FCA US LLC PLEADS GUILTY TO MAKING ILLEGAL PAYMENTS TO UAW
OFFICIALS
Monday, March 1, 2021
The American Subsidiary of Stellantis Agrees to Pay a $30 Million Fine
and be Subject to Federal Oversight
DETROIT--FCA US LLC (FCA, a/k/a Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), one of
the big three American automobile manufacturers, pleaded guilty to
conspiring to violate the Labor Management Relations Act, also known as
the Taft-Hartley Act, by making illegal payments to officers of the
United Auto Workers union, Acting United States Attorney Saima S.
Mohsin announced today.
FCA is the American operating subsidiary of Stellantis, and it is
headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan.
Today, a representative of FCA appeared in a virtual court hearing
before United States District Judge Paul D. Borman and admitted that
the company had conspired with other entities and individuals to
violate the Taft-Hartley Act by making more than $3.5 million in
illegal payments to officers of the International Union, United
Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America
(UAW) during the period 2009 through 2016. During the conspiracy,
executives of FCA, including Alphons Iacobelli, Jerome Durden, and
others, engineered the illegal payments to senior officials of the UAW.
During the conspiracy from 2009 through June 2015, Iacobelli was the
Senior Vice President of FCA US LLC in charge of labor relations.
The illegal payments to UAW officials took various forms, including
extravagant meals, rounds of golf, lavish parties for the UAW
International Executive Board, an Italian-made shotgun, clothing,
designer shoes, and other personal items paid for with credit cards
issued by the joint training center. FCA executives also paid off the
$262,000 home mortgage of former UAW Vice President General Holiefield.
Holiefield and his widow also received hundreds of thousands of dollars
directed through Holiefield's purported charitable organization, as
well as companies controlled by him which had contracts with the
training center. The illegal payments were passed through the UAW-
Chrysler Skill Development & Training Program d/b/a the UAW-Chrysler
National Training Center (NTC). Ostensibly, the NTC was supposed to
provide training and health and safety protections for FCA workers. The
UAW officials who accepted illegal payments included former UAW Vice
Presidents Holiefield and Norwood Jewell, Holiefield's widow, Monica
Morgan, and senior UAW officials, Virdell King, Keith Mickens, and
Nancy Johnson. Morgan and all of the UAW officials, except for
Holiefield, have pleaded guilty to conspiring to accept the illegal
payments from FCA or tax charges. Holiefield died in 2014.
During the hearing, the United States and FCA presented their Rule
11 Plea Agreement to the Court. Under the terms of the agreement, FCA
has agreed to pay a fine of $30 million, which represents a figure
triple the base fine amount provided for the offense by the United
States Sentencing Guidelines. In addition, FCA has agreed to be subject
to probation for 3 years. During that 3 year period, an independent
compliance monitor selected by the government will oversee the
company's adherence to Federal labor laws.
The Court set a date for a sentencing hearing, where it will impose
penalties based on the criminal conviction.
Acting United States Attorney Mohsin said, ``Through its
participation in this conspiracy, FCA violated Federal labor law and
undermined the collective bargaining process and the faith of the UAW's
membership in their leaders. By seeking a $30 million fine and 3 years
of oversight by a court-appointed monitor, we are holding FCA
accountable and sending a message to other companies that these types
of crimes will not be tolerated.''
``FCA US LLC conspired to make improper labor payments to high-
ranking UAW officials, which were used for personal mortgage expenses,
lavish parties, and entertainment expenses. Instead of negotiating in
good faith, FCA corrupted the collective bargaining process and the UAW
members' rights to fair representation. We will continue to work with
our law enforcement partners to root out systemic corruption and fraud
involving unions,'' stated Irene Lindow, Special Agent-in-Charge,
Chicago Region, U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General.
``Fiat Chrysler Automobiles used a program intended for the
betterment of its employees to instead benefit itself. By providing
money and valuables to UAW officials, FCA corrupted the labor-
management relationship and broke the law,'' said Timothy Waters,
Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Michigan. ``This case sends a
clear message that the FBI and its partners will hold both union
leadership and corporations accountable when they violate Federal
statutes.''
``Today's guilty plea should serve as a reminder that IRS-CI and
our law enforcement partners will aggressively investigate any company
who violates Federal law in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage in
the marketplace,'' stated Sarah Kull, Special Agent in Charge of the
Internal Revenue Service--Criminal Investigation Detroit Field Office.
``While the vast majority of union officials do their work
diligently and without incident, unfortunately civil and criminal
violations do occur. FCA's guilty plea today confirms that it attempted
to corrupt the collective bargaining process in order to gain favorable
contracts from the UAW at the expense of UAW members. FCA attempted
that corruption by making more than $3.5 million in illegal payments to
high ranking UAW officials,'' said Thomas Murray, District Director,
U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Labor-Management Standards. ``OLMS
will continue to work with its law enforcement partners to hold
accountable anyone--employer or union official--that unlawfully
exploits their position in the collective bargaining process for
personal or corporate financial gain without regard to the best
interests of union members.''
Thus far, as part of this investigation of illegal payments by FCA
to UAW officials, as well as fraud and embezzlement by other UAW
officers, 15 individuals have been convicted of convicted of Federal
crimes, including three former FCA executives. They include former UAW
Vice President Joseph Ashton (30 months in prison) former FCA Vice
President for Employee Relations Alphons Iacobelli (66 months in
prison), former FCA Financial Analyst Jerome Durden (15 months in
prison), former Director of FCA's Employee Relations Department Michael
Brown (12 months in prison), former senior UAW officials Virdell King
(60 days in prison), Keith Mickens (12 months in prison), Nancy A.
Johnson (12 months in prison), Monica Morgan, the widow of UAW Vice
President General Holiefield (18 months in prison), former UAW Vice
President Norwood Jewell (15 months in prison), former senior UAW
official Michael Grimes (28 months in prison), and former UAW Midwest
CAP President Edward ``Nick'' Robinson (12 months in prison). In
addition, the following UAW officials have pleaded guilty and are
awaiting sentencing: former UAW President Gary Jones, former senior UAW
official Jeffrey Pietrzyk, former UAW Region 5 Director and UAW Board
member Vance Pearson, and former UAW President Dennis Williams.
Acting U.S. Attorney Mohsin commended the outstanding work of the
Internal Revenue Service--Criminal Investigations, the U.S. Department
of Labor--Office of Labor-Management Standards and Office of Inspector
General, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in conducting a
comprehensive criminal investigation into labor corruption activities
involving a vital sector of the local and national economy.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys David A.
Gardey and Erin S. Shaw.
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statement for the record by the united steel, paper and forestry,
rubber, manufacturing, energy, allied industrial and service workers
international union (usw)
Chairman Sanders, Ranking Member Cassidy, and Members of the U.S.
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, on behalf
of our 850,000 members, we want to thank you for holding this important
hearing on the value that strong union contracts provide--both for
their members and for workers all across this country.
The Importance of Strong Union Contracts
To highlight the importance of union contracts, below is a
collection of several key contract fights that our union has won over
the past 18 months, delivering meaningful results to both our members
and other workers in these industries:
Cleveland Cliffs and U.S. Steel: In October and
December 2022, roughly 23,000 members across 26 facilities
owned and operated by Cleveland Cliffs and U.S. Steel ratified
a new, 4-year contract. The contract includes a lump sum bonus,
20 percent wage increases over the term of the contract,
pension increases, an additional holiday, and improved
healthcare for both active members and retirees. This continues
a basic steel bargaining wage standard that benefits the entire
steel industry.
Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) and Domtar:
Importantly, contracts do not only deal with wages or benefits,
but also can impact other aspects of workers' lives as well.
Back in May 2022, USW contract agreements in the paper sector
proved just that. More than 5,000 workers at PCA and Domtar won
strong language about domestic violence protections in their
collective bargaining agreements. The language allows for
training and support, as well as strong leave language for
workers affected by domestic violence.
Bobcat: More than 700 workers at a Bobcat facility in
Bismarck, North Dakota ratified a 4-year contract back in July
2023. The contract provides annual wage increases, requires the
company to give notice to workers if they have to work
overtime, and prevents them from being mandated to work on
Sundays.
Cleveland Cliffs Northshore Mining: 400 new USW
members in Minnesota's Iron Range ratified their first contract
in September 2023, which includes a lump sum bonus, annual wage
increases, enhanced protections for job security, and
improvements in occupational health and safety. The contract
also features high-quality health insurance with no monthly
premiums, as well as defined benefit pensions, while
maintaining an existing 401(k) with company-matching
contributions.
Kumho Tire: In August 2023, 325 workers at Kumho Tire
won a strong, 4-year contract after nearly 4 years of
negotiating. These workers--who are the first tire workers to
form a union in more than 40 years--faced an uphill battle with
their obstinate employer, but they persevered and were able to
achieve significant victories. The contract includes yearly
wage improvements and other pay increases. It also includes
additional paid time off, a joint health and safety committee,
and other workplace protections, all while maintaining quality
healthcare and other benefits.
In each of these cases, our union members have taken advantage of
their federally protected right to collectively bargain with their
employers. It is through these strong agreements that workers obtain a
wage premium relative to their non-union peers: according to a recent
report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury), the current
union wage premium is between 10 and 15 percent. \1\ Moreover, we also
set industry standards, establishing what experts refer to as
spillovers. That same Treasury report found that ``each 1 percentage
point increase in private-sector union membership rates translates to
about a 0.3 percent increase in nonunion wages''. \2\
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\1\ U.S. Department of the Treasury, ``Featured Stories: Labor
Unions and the U.S. Economy'', August 28, 2023.
\2\ Ibid.
The Need for Federal Policy Reform
However, in most cases, our members are fighting for these contract
wins in spite of existing labor law, not because of it. We need policy
interventions to help re-balance the scales in favor of workers. Far
too often, employers are able to leverage current labor law, which
allows them to wield unfair power in collective bargaining
negotiations. For example, as mentioned above, our workers at Kumho
Tire went 4 years without a first contract because their employer
refused to bargain with them in good faith, and our system of labor law
currently lacks any remedy for such intransigence. Another example
would be the former Ozburn-Hessey Logistics facility, now owned by
GEODIS SA in Memphis, Tennessee. Workers at this location voted to join
USW in May 2013. Ten years later, those workers are only now voting on
their first collective bargaining agreement.
Congress must pass S. 567, the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the
Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2023. By passing this legislation,
Congress would finally address our failing system of labor law: it
would streamline the union election process, eliminate harmful right-
to-work laws, ban certain anti-union coercion activities, and impose
financial penalties on employers when they do break the law. Of
particular relevance for union contract negotiations, the PRO Act would
hold employers accountable to bargain in good faith once their workers
have formed a union. Employers would be required to begin bargaining
within 10 days of the union's request, and would then have 90 days to
come to an agreement with the union or be forced to enter into
mediation, and then perhaps, binding tripartite arbitration. Such a
policy would provide a critical incentive--and eventually a
requirement--for employers to bargain with their workers.
Conclusion
The right to form a union and collectively bargain is federally
guaranteed, and ensuring its protection is of the utmost importance. We
strongly support our siblings all across the labor movement in fighting
for the best possible contract. While we will continue to bargain for
strong agreements, we urge Congress to fix our broken system of labor
law and pass S. 567, the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to
Organize Act of 2023. Thank you for holding this hearing and shining a
spotlight on this critical issue.
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Continued in Part 2